Wild Walls - my botanical obsession
Here's something that happens once you start putting your work out into the world: E
veryone becomes a “creative director”.
“Have you thought about doing animals?”
“What about a series with birds in it?”
“You're so good at plants, but wouldn't it be interesting to branch out?”
Always said kindly. Always meant well. And every time, I smile and nod and think, quietly: Yes, I love those things but that's not where this particular series of work comes from.
My work has never once started with a gap in the market or a suggestion from someone standing at an art fair. It starts with me, alone, wanting to paint the thing I can't stop thinking about.
Non-artists giving artists notes is one of life's funnier double standards - After all, you wouldn’t walk up to a drummer and suggest they play the violin because you’ve always liked the sound of it - right? No - that’s completely nuts.
For a while, that used to make me a bit wobbly. Do you only paint plants? Well - no - but I like them! I used to feel like I owed people an explanation for that.
But I kept painting them anyway, because it made my heart happy. I love the shapes, the formations, the way one colour bleeds into the next. I love how endlessly interesting plants actually are, once you really look. I didn't need permission to keep going - I was already going.
Then in June, part-way through working on this collection, I roamed the local Library for some inspo - as you do - and I picked up a gorgeous book called …
… KUSAMA: Cosmic nature
All about the (recently passed) artist and ICON - Yayoi Kusama.
This book had such beautiful photography and loads of her own sketches throughout. Her family ran a plant nursery in Nagano, growing flower seeds for a living, and she spent her childhood surrounded by rows and rows of them - and somewhere in that, she found the thing she'd spend the rest of her life obsessed with - pattern, repeated without end. Dots, seed pods, shapes multiplying into more shapes. She didn't diversify her way into becoming one of the most significant artists of the last century. She went the other way - deeper into the one obsession, over and over, for decades, until the repetition itself became the whole point.
Her story just confirmed what I already felt in my hands: plants aren't a lane I'm stuck in. They're the thing I'll never run out of. Nature doesn't repeat cleanly - it tangles, it roots down in one place and turns up somewhere else entirely, it invents a new shape every time you think you've seen them all. Endless colour, endless form, endless design, all growing out of the same instinct. Why would I paint anything else?
Hard at work painting Hothouse at Night - my latest addition to the Wild Walls collection
So my botanical obsession with my new Wild Walls collection isn't me holding back from other subjects. It's me finally stopping the apologising and going the other way completely - more is more, and I mean that.
I’m letting it grow everywhere, all over the canvas, all around you, fully immersive, the way it actually wants to. These pieces take longer because of it. They're meant to. Some things are worth the wait.
More from this world coming soon.
Briar X
