Entries from the Pollinate Panoply Field Archive

The Tarn, France

As an American, who has moved to France in her middle years, I am often lost in the language and the culture. I am never lost in nature. Spending time in the forests, meadows, streamsides and prairies offers me endless opportunities for inspiration and beauty. Nature is the ultimate artist. In the humble hayfields around our small mountain village, wildflowers take turns blooming throughout the summer. Pale pink mallow blooms next to vivid yellow woodruff. Violet knapweed creates bright punctuations of color while graceful queen anne’s lace blends everything together with her creamy white and soft greens. Golden brown grasses clump together and give a sense of proportion.

As a professional landscaper, I used the compositions of color, form, and empty space in wild landscapes to guide my domestic designs. I have, unconsciously, employed those same principles into my surface pattern designs. It is a kind of meditation for me that begins with long walks in the forest, or along the rigole. The dog and I sit quietly in the meadow and watch how the grasses move in the breeze, like ripples on a golden sea. A late Fall rainfall creates visible edges on the beech leaves and the sun through the damp leaves reveals the most subtle and sublime shades of rose and ochre. This palette that nature works with resembles the colors found in Art Nouveau and Arts & Crafts design traditions. It is no accident that William Morris chose the colors he worked with. I imagine that he, too, spent countless hours in his garden and walking the heaths and hedges of the English countryside. I imagine he went home and ground his pigments to recreate the golden yellows, sage greens, heather rose, violet harebells, pale green willows, deep green oak leaves and burnt sienna chestnuts.

Designing by hand is a sensual meditative process. The scent of watercolors & india ink. The gummy eraser across heavy sketching paper. The pastels that stick to one’s elbows and knuckles. It is also a lesson in patience and self-acceptance. I am not naturally a painter or sketcher. My art has always been in the imagining and placement of plants. I often fall far short of my imagination when I take up paper and pencil. But, with continued observation, and regular practice, my drawings are becoming increasingly pleasing to me. Perhaps this is one of the greatest gifts that art gives to the practitioner. It inspires us to slow down, to pay attention, and to honor the process of cultivating our own sense of well-being. It encourages one to delight in the discovery of our own joy.