Dear flower lover Reader

I’m starting today a new creative journey and wanted to share it with you. I’ve just enrolled in the course “Elas Pintaram a Natureza” (“They Painted Nature”) by Um Teto Seu, a deep dive into women artists who explored nature, plants, and landscapes throughout history.

Unfortunately the course is in Portuguese and therefore not accessible to everyone, but I hope to gather plenty of inspiration to enrich the content I share here. I’ve already begun my own exploration of women artists who painted nature, and I’m excited to start bringing the ideas and insights I discover into my own art practice, which I’m now starting to share with you.

Tracing the Lineage: Women Artists Who Painted Nature

As soon as I enrolled the course, I felt inspired to explore women artists who painted nature on my own. I began researching and studying their work, and here are three artists whose practices have particularly captured my attention. Each one approaches flowers and nature in a unique way, offering lessons we can carry into our own art.

Mary Delany - Master of Botanical Paper Mosaics ​Delany created intricate botanical paper mosaics later in life, cutting tiny pieces of colored paper to recreate plants with remarkable accuracy — a practice that predated Matisse’s paper cutouts by over a century. Through careful layering and close observation, she captured the structure and movement of each plant. While not overtly symbolic, her work echoes floriography in the way it records the unique character of every species, reminding us of the power of patience and attention in art.

Anna Atkins - Pioneer of Botanical Photography ​Atkins pioneered photography as a way to document plants. Using cyanotype, she placed specimens directly onto sensitized paper, letting sunlight create luminous blue images of algae, ferns, and flowers. By focusing on silhouette, structure, and pattern, her work allows each plant to communicate its presence without color or decoration. While not traditional floriography, her images suggest a visual language where form itself carries meaning.

Hilma af Klint - Visionary of Botanical Abstraction While known for her pioneering abstraction, Hilma af Klint also created a remarkable series of botanical drawings, combining careful observation of plants with geometric and symbolic motifs. Her studies of native flora blend scientific detail with intuition, reflecting her belief that nature reveals hidden, spiritual connections. These works show how she bridged careful botanical study with personal symbolism, inspiring ways to see plants as both physical forms and sources of creative insight.

Bringing Their Lessons Into Our Journals

These three artists offer distinct and complementary ways to bring flowers into our own creative practice.

Mary Delany teaches us to slow down and work with care. By observing plants closely and translating them through cutting, layering, and collage, patience and precision become an essential part of the artwork.

In your art journal, spend time observing a single plant and translate it through cutting, layering, and collage. Work patiently with paper, color, and shape, allowing precision and attention to guide the page.

Anna Atkins invites us to experiment with process. Working with light, tracing, printing, or silhouettes, she shows how plants can be explored through structure and form rather than color or ornament.

Try tracing leaves or flowers, creating silhouettes, rubbings, or simple prints. Focus on structure, texture, and negative space rather than color, letting light, repetition, and form shape your journal spread.

Hilma af Klint encourages us to move beyond representation. Botanical forms can evolve into symbols, patterns, or abstract shapes that express intuition, emotion, and unseen connections.

Begin with a botanical form and allow it to evolve into symbols, patterns, or abstract shapes. Use color, geometry, and intuitive marks to express feelings, energy, or unseen connections inspired by plants.

Together, their practices remind us that flowers can be carefully observed, experimentally recorded, and intuitively transformed within our own creative work.

Flowers aren’t meant to be kept to ourselves and neither is inspiration! I’ll keep exploring feminine floral artists and letting their ideas bloom in my journals and sketches.

Now it’s your turn: hit reply and tell me which of these artists sparked your creativity or which flower has captured your imagination lately? Let’s grow this conversation together!

With love,