“When we do know our own flowers we find the love for them within us and very often the song to express it already in our poetry. And perhaps only then is there that aching desire to see them preserved from meaningless destruction.” Kathleen McArthur 1953.
The pieces produced for the exhibition include printmaking, weaving, fabric, cyanotype, photo-media biochrome, tapestry, digital images, handmade ink, paper, natural fibres and dyes, stoneware, clay, modelling compound, earthenware, leather, metals, pencil and acrylic – a range nearly as wide as the selection of native flowers.
Tricia Dobson, an initiator of the retreat, says that the enthusiasm generated could see a local wildflower art exhibition being established in the future. Tricia chose to make a pottery piece for her contribution.
“The artists stretched and challenged themselves to do something special outside their usual practice. I hadn’t done any pottery for many years, but I had made a vase- which I realised didn’t look right without any flowers in it – so I made a bunch of pottery wildflowers. There were a lot of broken pieces in the process, and my five-year-old grandson remarked, ‘Grandma, you’re really not very good at making things, are you?’ ”
Tricia says that she loved the process of learning and observing flowers in the bush, creating individual pieces and collaborating on others. “We made a cyanotype together that was so big we had to make it on the side of the road – that got us some funny looks!
Sara Za Enback, from Sweden’s Arctic Circle, says that it took her a while after coming to Queensland to even notice native Australian flowers.
“Unlike the stereotypical look of petals in a circle, which you come to expect, Australian wildflowers look so wonderfully different. My boyfriend – now my husband – bought me a bunch of Australian flowers and I thought they were very strange. It’s nice now to be able to look with different eyes and actually see and appreciate the flowers that surround me – and I see them everywhere.”
Sara had started a wildflower art project called Island Whispers, through an RPAC Passages development program, so Wildflowering by Design was a natural fit for her work. Sara wanted to push boundaries and try something new; recycled frames, canvases, and flower-patterned fabric appealed, with drawings of native flower images dominating the cultivated garden varieties.
“It was an experiment but it worked quite well – lots of layers, some of them hidden. My method is experiment, explore, play – when I try to control too much it doesn’t work, I’m not trying for super-realistic images, I like the quirky stuff!”
Wildflowering by Design has ‘quirky’ by the truckload, and it’s an inspirational collection of interpretations of our beautiful bush plants. See the exhibition at Redland Art Gallery until June 3.
