It's strange how an art project can just arrive. I'm in New Zealand with family, and spotted this book in a closing down sale in Nelson when we stopped for coffee. The gorgeous flowers on its front cover caught my eye, but when I looked closer it made my hackles rise with its assumptions and misleading descriptions: Simple, quick, easy, practical. My mother arranged flowers, and it never seemed to be any of those. I resisted learning back then, and it seems I'm still resisting.
Inspired by my niece's photography experiments., I brainstormed ways that I could 'explode' the quick and easy arrangements:
from my little sketchbook
and below you can see what happened to "Flowers and Fruit". In my big sketchbook, the flowers were liberated from the kumquats, limes, lemons, and crockery. The cut-out inspired painting. The exploded flowers asked to be printed. The trial was re-done on a square canvas.
The title of the final piece comes from the book - "guaranteed to bring a ray of sunshine into your home".