Pressed Flowers Garden of Poems

This book is the result of my life-long obsession with any media that enables me to create. I am a media Donna Juana. I love and am seduced by all mediums. These pressed flower paintings were originally made as cards to mail. I used the pressed dried flowers like a brush, gluing them with a découpage medium onto Strathmore canvas cards that have matching envelopes. After the flowers were glued in place I painted in background with water color. The next medium I used here was to touch up the picture with colored pencils and pens. I let the flowers dictate the process — playing. In some of the cards I added another medium with an origami butterfly. When I had a stack of 40 cards I decided to make a book to further preserve my work since once the card is mailed I no longer have it. For the next process of preservation I scanned the cards and then opened the images in Photoshop. Except for a few minor color corrections the pressed flower images are preserved. The original cards are signed and numbered. The digital flower paintings where then placed in the program Adobe InDesign to process for publication into this book. The book needed some words to “Illustrate” my images. That was a new pleasurable process that began with picking flowers. The poems included in book begin with the mystic poet, Kabir, born in India around 1440. The last poem is by Aldous Huxley who died in 1963. All these poems are now in the public domain. So, like the preserved flowers they too can have a new incarnation. Their poems have reference to flowers or Gardens and like all poetry they are about much more.