The plant-inspired backgrounds to Kehinde Wiley’s (b.1977) portraits are decorative devices to displace the subject from their expected environment. This helps us lose some of our preconceptions, allowing us to see better. Plants being plants, they do a whole lot more than that. They play with stereotypes of young black male masculinity and sensitivity, highlight …
We love it when the protagonist of a poem is a plant. If on top of that a multitude of other plants star, then even better. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s (1792 – 1822) lyrical fable The Sensitive Plant is a mammoth work, exploring the small matter of the meaning of life, with allegorical support from plants in a …
Cedric Morris (1889 – 1982) was a Welsh artist who painted plants – showy, colour drenched, often densely packed, floral arrangements. He was also a plantsman, cultivating a garden in Suffolk where he bred thousands of irises. His painting Iris Seedlings (1943) held by the Tate, no doubt inspired by the latter pursuit. He was …
American born Daniel Ridgway Knight (1839 – 1924) painted women outdoors surrounded by a diverse array of plants, many in flower, always beautiful. The women are interesting, but they are there of course to draw our attention to the main attraction. Tending The Garden Tending The Garden (detail) Spring Blossoms Picking Wildflowers The Rose Garden …
Below is a selection of plant-inspired cover designs from recent fiction releases by some inspired contemporary artists. Underneath those are more artworks, from older books, mostly non-fiction, taken from the fabulous Pinterest board of João Henriques. Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane, Hamish Hamilton. Cover by Stanley Donwood Weathering by Lucy Wood, Bloomsbury Publishing. Cover by Greg Heinimann The Betrayers by …
The Trees by Philip Larkin (1922 – 1985) was published in his fourth and final volume of poetry, High Windows in 1974. It meditates, laments but ultimately celebrates the life-cycle of trees. Time lapse videos by Neil Bromhall demonstrate the anatomical wonder of opening tree leaf buds that will be occurring everywhere in the coming weeks. The Trees by Philip Larkin …
Canadian-born, german-based photographer Anne Hoerter is truly dedicated to her art. With compositions that combine many images, taking months to complete, she has been honing her technique for ten years. She takes her inspiration from Dutch still life paintings, botanical illustration from the 1800s, and nature’s many natural forms. Below she shares with us her …
Plants are all around us in urban areas, we just have to look. London for example is teeming with plants; with wild species, curated spaces full of cultivated ones, and artistic representations all present. Take a stroll down New Bond Street right now, all the high-end designers are pushing botanics like mad. This weekend on a walk …
Once voted the UK’s 5th most popular poem of all time in a Radio 4 poll, Daffodils, also known as I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, is Wordsworth’s best known poem and one of the Lake District Tourist Board’s favourite plants. It was first published in 1807 in Poems in Two Volumes, with a few …
When critics talk about Brett Weston (1911 – 1993) they often compare his work to that of his father’s, influential Modernist photographer Edward Weston. Or else, they discuss his place in the american male canon of twentieth century photographers, usually topped by his contemporary Ansel Adams. Like Adams, and his father, he focused on monochromatic …