Patterns for nature
This autumn, I am presenting a new series of printed patterns that have a special story behind them. It began with a mail from Transylvania earlier this year, which resulted some months later in my travelling to this beautiful part of the world, to be inspired by a special project which I had been invited to support.
Deep in Transylvania in the heart of Romania lies the little farming village of Copßa Mare. Here, life as people have lived it for centuries continues into the present day. The village is still inhabited mostly by peasant farmers whose families have worked the hilly land above the village for generations, grazing cows, water buffalo, sheep and goats on the grasslands to produce milk for cheese. The grasslands are rich in fodder plants and many other flowers and grasses that support a bewildering array of species of invertebrates and mammals.
This exceptional biodiversity exists thanks to 600 years or more of mixed subsistence farming. Modern farming however is closing in on this precious piece of land. Foreign investors supported by subsidies bring with them intensive, heavily mechanised farming methods, using a lot of chemical pesticides and laying waste to large areas of these high nature value grasslands.
Ten years ago, James and Rachel de Candole, a British couple who have spent all their adult lives in Central Europe, moved to the village. Having their own horses, they quickly became familiar with the beautiful nature around them and aware of the change that was coming. They wanted to do something to help conserve this fragile ecosystem. As conservation starts with knowledge and insight in what is there in the first place, they invited botanists and botanical artists to their home and under the guidance of local botanist Mihaela Sava began building a grasslands herbarium to record what they estimate to be some 300 flowering plant species in the farmed meadows above the village.
In early 2024, I received an email from James inviting me to come to Copßa Mare, to be inspired by the plants growing above the village and to make a series of pattern designs to help support their project. Feeling very involved in the conservation of natural ecosystems myself, I thought their goal was a worth my support. And so, in a scorching hot August I travelled to a part of the world that I had not visited before. For a few short days, I immersed myself in the local plant life, in the company of two botanical artists and two botanists.
While the botanists collected plants for the herbarium, the artists made astonishingly detailed representations of the plants that I too was drawing. But my process is so different. Like them, I start with simple sketches, but as they go in greater and greater detail as they strive for accuracy, I move towards simplicity. The technique that I use for printing my designs is a stencil printing technique that I have developed over the years. It asks for simplification of design and my style is also a style in which I take one idea that I associate with a source of inspiration and then stylise my designs around that idea.
Working on this Transylvania collection, I found a common feeling in all the plants I was looking at and drawing, as well as in the land itself. A warm, raw, unrefined and wild authenticity, that was present everywhere I looked. It resulted in a series of three plant-inspired prints of species that were growing at that time of year in warm and strong colours. I am happy that the designs that I started in Transylvania, and you that you can find on my website (in my shop and gallery), will help tell the world just how important it is to conserve these grasslands and the sustainable farming methods that create and sustain it.
I have done a couple of fundraisers using my work before, but this is the first time that the subject of the fundraiser is actually in the work itself. Find out more about the Transylvania School of Botanic Art & illustration and the project on the website of the school.
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