Inspiration: A Love of Dahlias & Symbolism

We have set a goal to use our creativity and imagination, and to allow concept and colour to inspire us to make. In this week's project I recount my creative thought process and the story behind the dahlias in this arrangement to illustrate how art defines and my craft intertwines with every aspect of my life, work, love and family.

I can always feel when an arrangement is coming together, it's when my finger tips start to dance. How they move across petals, loving them, curling them down. Guiding stems, pushing and pulling them. It's a dance. I step forward to work and back to examine my work, and over again. That is like a dance. But mostly I can feel it in my fingertips. I am like this with drawing and painting too. I like the texture on my fingertips to smudge and blend and trust my hands to guide the work to completion.

We grow dahlias. I like to say this, but really it is David who grows dahlias for us to use. How is that for romance. I love flowers so he grows flowers for me. It must be working, we had a baby this year. And since his arrival, I have taken a step back from the business to nurture our family, to readjust, shuffle things back and forth. Life is like that, a sort of dance. A type of rebirth as our family grows. I asked David to step away from his dahlias and spend more time as a Daddy this summer, but I can tell he misses it.

So much so that he dug up any area of our yard that he could find and buried his favourite tubers. It's been amusing to watch them pop up here and there, in random places. He grew one of each of his favourite variety. He has patience for growing. He waits on them and watches for new blooms. He still wakes up early to cut them at the optimal hour. He lines them up in vases with cool water, on display waiting for me. The brightest colours of dahlias.

Love it bright like this, sometimes. It radiates so bright, it's blurry to my eyes. Or we don't always see it because it is in these small gestures. Usually fleeting in nature and easy to miss, a smudge and gone. It is David's dahlias I used to make this arrangement. Deep romantic reds and hot pinks are mixed with pops of the most brilliant hues I could find. An ode to love, an ode to our love of dahlias, and an ode to the dahlias David loves to grow.

When styling and photographing this arrangement, I played with the push and pull of light and shadow. A nod to Dutch Masters. Mostly, I played around with Renaissance iconography found in paintings. To create layer upon layer of vivid symbolism, I added objects to the foreground. In Renaissance paintings, a sea shell was depicted to symbolize marriage and fertility. The butterfly, a symbol of the soul, immortality, rebirth and resurrection. A hand rake nods to growth and cultivation. Golden goblets suggest wealth, and also communion. For Renaissance painters, fruit and flowers were part of a rich visual language. Spilling red currants and plump figs hint at decadence and their ripeness at this very moment. Pomegranates symbolize eternal life; it along with the apple branch also depicts mans fall from grace and sinful nature. A fluttering white curtain, symbolizes a heavenly world in which the splendour of the holy and divine is only beginning to be shown.

I am not religious, but this is beautiful language. "Decadent visual reminders," I think. This work is complete. It must be. The linen has started billowing with the wind coming in the open door and is falling on me and the flowers.