Featured Artist Sigrid Patterson

Artist Sigrid Patterson expresses the language of flowers by creating bold, colorful floral portraits. See more of her work on her website.

 

 

I am a visual artist based on the east coast of Australia in Bundjalung County. I love the process of making art, from putting the first bold shapes on to the canvas to the final detailed strokes. For me, it’s about making a plan, breaking that plan, solving problems, and exploring new directions. I’m always learning something new, either about painting or how to express my thoughts about the subject and the stories I’m telling.

 

 

I find the natural world of plants, flowers, insects and their cycles enchanting. For this reason, I began by learning how to paint all kinds of flowers. These range from the delicate exotics that we all love like roses, peonies and iris, to my personal favourites—quirky Australian blooms. There is a whole language of flowers that I draw upon in my pieces.

 

 

I started to grow as an artist when I began to weave stories into each piece. This began with the devastating bushfires in Australia that started in late 2019. So much native habitat, native animals, farm stock and homes were lost. Like many, I was concerned about the way Australia had adopted unsustainable monoculture farming practices and large-scale mining.

 

 

I started to weave my thoughts and stories into my paintings using flowers and plants to tell those stories. This started with a series I called Floriography. It was comprised of large pieces that conveyed the need for us to balance our farming and mining practices with traditional indigenous knowledge. That knowledge has cared for and protected the land, sea and air for millions of years.

 

 

These stories are implicitly symbolised through paintings that depict bottlebrush flowers, eucalyptus leaves or banksia flowers standing strong and beautiful in crystal vases that actually leach lead into the very water needed for survival. My paintings, however, are not about sadness; for me they represent hope, resilience and courage.

 

 

Another of my series of paintings shows bunches of Australian native flowers in tin cans and mirror ball planters. The flowers in these pieces were all either from my own sprawling native garden or from neighbours.

 

 

My paintings also tell the story of how the Australian floral industry flies in native plants an incredible number of miles from countries such as Kenya, Colombia and Ecuador. They are often flown overnight and are treated with strong chemicals to keep them looking fresh. In this series I call for flowers to be grown—not flown—for a more sustainable industry.

 

 

I have  also created a series about community connection. In it, I depict a variety of hybrid flowers representing the social fabric of our communities. This is a lot of fun and is close to my heart.

 

 

I paint in either oils or acrylics and use many layers of paint to create depth, light and shadow. Sometimes I include reflective surfaces to encourage the viewer to reflect on the stories within. I love the dark, moody feel of the works of the old Dutch and other European masters. My work is a modern version of the still life genre with contemporary objects such as tin cans and found bottles as vases.

 

 

I am happiest when I paint and look forward to sharing my stories through the language of flowers.

 

Artist Sigrid Patterson invites you to follow her on Instagram and Facebook.

 

Want to stay current on cutting edge business articles from Artsy Shark, plus artist features, and an invitation to the next Call for Artists? Click below to sign up for our twice-monthly email. You’ll get all this plus opportunities and special offers that you can’t get anywhere else!