Bring on those May Flowers!

Hopefully by now, the spring has sprung mantra we have all come to know and love, means that it actually has SPRUNG! But however the season of spring is behaving in your neck of the woods, here on this blog, it is really in full bloom. We are continuing the two part blog series of, "April showers, bring May flowers," and this month features the second part of the phrase by focusing on all things flowery. This post is about several artists who all use the subject of flowers(and sometimes even the real thing), to create their unique and beautiful artwork. Below are a few images of the artists' work. You can also learn more about them if you wish, by clicking on their name below their artwork. Enjoy!

#1 Jane Ironside paints flowers that literally pop off the canvas. She also created the orange tulips painting at the beginning of this post. Using an "impasto" style(very thick paint) and a palette knife, she creates artwork that is, as she puts it, just "like icing cupcakes." Each artwork is one of a kind due to it's very unique texture. She currently sells her art on Etsy.

#2 Bridget Beth Collins, a Seattle-based artist known as the "Flora Forager," creates her colorful illustrations by gathering flowers and other foliage from gardens, meadows, and woods by her neighborhood in the Pacific Northwest. She arranges all the natural elements on a background of white paper, and then photographs her creations.

#3 Olga Prinku creates a unique art form of embroidery using dried flowers. She lives in North Yorkshire, UK, and forages many of the materials she needs from the countryside by where she lives. She stitches or weaves the organic material to attach it to the tulle, thus creating a somewhat invisible background behind the botanicals.

Extra Credit:

There were SO many incredible artists who use flowers in some way for their artwork, that it was really hard to just choose 3! So, here are 2 extra credit flower artists for you to enjoy!

#4 Tara Lee Bennett is a paper artist and sculptor who lives in British Columbia. She creates visually stunning paper artworks by cutting and assembling small pieces of paper into flowery artworks. She currently works in mostly monochromatic shades of black and white.

#5 Marianne Eriksen Scott-Hansen does "paper couture." She makes these stunning, oversized flowers by gathering and cutting many thin sheets of colorful tissue paper, creating flowers and leaves with a dreamy quality. She likes to experiment with her work to see how far "you can stretch paper."

Hopefully, you have enjoyed learning about these artists who take the subject of everyday flowers; something that simply grows and lives all around us, and bring it to an incredible and creative new way of looking at something. The arts allow all of us to do this--we just have to look around and find something that interests us!