Why the Floral Arts Fascinate Me
Ok… who here has watched The Great Flower Fight Netflix series?
Come on - lift those hands. There’s no shame here; you’re among friends!
The show is a bit… goofy. But it’s also mind-expanding! To use plants - their colors, their textures, their characteristics, their meanings - to create mammoth, LIVING, sculptural art just boggles the brain.
I was always smitten with plants. I had little plots, planters, seed catalogs, and flower books, and fancied myself a gardener. Alas, impatient people should NOT wield a trowel and hose, and I black thumbed most of my gardening experiments into - literally - the ground.
Still, this didn’t stop me from completing a Master Gardener course (disappointingly about *eww* bugs and mold), acing my Botany and Wildflowers of Ohio classes and even, in my earlier years, taking a job at a nearby florist.
If I could trace one common thread through all of these experiences, it would be a fascination with floral and landscape design. Maybe because it’s equivalent to painting with plants!
The textures, the tones, the movement - oo-la-la!
As the “artistic one” of the family, I organically fell into the role of family faux flower arranger and plant bed designer. I wasn’t especially good at it, but I was better than nothing.
Frankly, I’m not intuitive about 3-dimensional artistry; my background is all 2-D. Set me up with a paper and pencil, and I’ll kick some creative butt. But the moment you add “spatial design” to the equation, I’m looking for the nearest life jacket.
How do you make something look beautiful from every angle? I don’t have the foggiest clue… and that’s why I can’t wait to learn!
Something else to appreciate about the floral arts relates back to the popular artist phrase “bringing artwork to life,” the holy grail of the art world. And the floral arts use a medium that is very often real-deal, bona-fide ALIVE. Presto! Grail in hand.
Aha… but this just means your mission has changed. Now you have the sometimes much more difficult task of editing your choices, bringing out the best in your medium, and not shadowing the beauty of your plants with the complexity of your design. No small feat!
Plants - live and dried - have minds of their own. They’re going to put a petal out here (dammit!), and you better come to terms with that! It becomes a lively challenge, then, to work with each plant’s quirks in a way that makes them shine individually and jive as a cohesive group.
A humbling art form, this one. And, like I mentioned in a past Inspiration post [insert link here], humility goes a long way toward making you a better artist.
Where do you have green, growing things in your life, and how do you use them to express who you are? Please comment below!
