While living flowers and leaves usually depict ideas of hope, love and happiness, dead ones embody feelings of the opposite; decay, depression and sadness.
Embalmed in permanent stasis, the use of real flowers in these pieces reflect the complexities of being human.
I am interested in the struggles and the contradictions. The beauty, and, simultaneously the dark wells of the mind.
I use Pansy Violas in particular in my work, as the pansy is mentioned in the Shakespeare play Hamlet, Ophelia, who is mad with grief at the death of her father, rambles on about strewing herbs “And there is pansies, that’s for thoughts” (Act IV, Scene 5.)
Additionally, the word pansy comes from the French ‘pensée’ meaning ‘thought’.
