botanical portraits

I’ve always loved the way plants can hold a memory.

Sometimes it’s a flower that brings me back to someone before I even understand why. Sometimes it’s a scent, or a color, or the shape of something growing in a place that feels familiar. It can be something as simple as walking through the fields behind my parents’ home, noticing what was blooming along the edges, or hearing my mom name a plant as we passed it, not in a formal teaching kind of way, but in the quiet everyday way that people pass their loves down to us.

I don’t think I realized then how much she was teaching me to notice.

My mom has always loved plants, and so much of my own love for the natural world comes from her. She pays attention to what’s growing, what’s changing, what needs tending, and what somehow comes back again after a season of looking like it might not. She has kept plants alive for decades, which still feels like a kind of magic to me, especially because I know how much care and patience that kind of thing requires. Plants ask you to pay attention. They don’t always announce what they need, but if you’re willing to observe them closely, they’ll tell you.

I think that way of seeing shaped me more than I knew.

Long before I realized it, I was already using plants as a way of understanding the people I love. Certain flowers became connected to certain people in my mind, not because anyone sat me down and explained their meaning, but because memory has its own way of weaving things together. A grandmother and the irises I can still picture so clearly. My mom and the plants she has carried from season to season. My sisters, the feeling of courage and the feeling of home. A place and the flowers that seem to belong to it.

Over time, those little associations became their own kind of language, and I think The Wild Garden grew out of that language.

A Pattern I Didn’t Recognize at First

When I look back, I can see that this idea has been showing up in my work for a long time, even before I had words for what I was doing.

In graduate school, I created a project inspired by my daughter Leona’s heritage. I researched plants connected to each part of her background and used them to build a pattern, almost like a botanical expression of lineage, identity, and place. At the time, I don’t think I fully understood why that idea felt so meaningful to me, but I can see now that I was already asking some of the same questions I’m still asking in this collection.

What grows from where we come from? What do we carry from the places and people before us? How can something as simple as a flower hold a much larger story?

I’ve always been fascinated by native plants, not only because they’re beautiful, but because they belong to a larger relationship. They’re connected to the soil, the climate, the insects and birds and creatures that depend on them, and the long, quiet history of a place. The more I learn about them, the more I’m reminded that nothing in nature exists by itself. Everything is in conversation with something else.

That idea feels endlessly meaningful to me.

A flower is never just a flower. It’s part of an ecosystem. It’s shaped by where it grows and by what grows around it. It supports other life, responds to its environment, and belongs to a story much larger than itself.

I think that’s why The Wild Garden didn’t feel like a completely new idea when it began. It felt more like something I’d been circling for years finally revealing itself, bringing together my love of botanicals, pattern, research, memory, place, and the people who have shaped me.

Where the First Piece Began

The first piece began in my own home, in a quiet little space above my dresser that had been asking for something for a while.

I kept imagining something botanical there, but not in a simple or decorative way. I wanted it to feel lush and balanced, peaceful but still full of life, the way a garden can feel when everything is growing in its own direction and somehow still belongs together. I didn’t have the whole idea yet, but I could feel the shape of it. It needed to be layered. It needed movement. It needed to feel like something I’d want to live with every day.

At the same time, my mom was very much on my mind.

She’d been going through something difficult, and I found myself carrying her with me in that way we do when someone we love is moving through something hard. She was in the background of everything, not always in a loud way, but present. And because so much of my love for plants comes from her, it makes sense to me now that the piece started to take shape around a flower.

I was drawn to a green orchid first, and the more I worked with it, the more it felt like the right beginning. It wasn’t meant to look like my mom, but it held something that reminded me of her. Something abundant and alive. Something delicate, but not fragile. Something with its own quiet strength.

From there, my curiosity started doing what it always does, which is follow one detail until it opens into another.

I wanted to know where that orchid was native to, and once I started looking into that, the piece began to move beyond the flower itself. I started thinking about what else would grow in that same place, what colors would naturally appear there, what insects or butterflies might move through that environment, and what other plants might belong to the same world. I found ylang ylang, which felt meaningful because I’ve always loved the essential oil, and then I started looking for butterflies that could carry both the green of the orchid and the yellow of the ylang ylang.

What I thought might be a botanical painting slowly became something much more layered.

The orchid was still the center, but it wasn’t alone anymore. It had a place. It had companions. It had movement around it. The other plants and insects weren’t there just to make the composition more beautiful, although of course I wanted it to be beautiful. They were there because they helped the piece feel rooted in a world.

That was when I started to understand what I was really making. It wasn’t a portrait in the way we usually think of portraits, but it was a portrait all the same. It was a way of painting my mom without painting her face, a way of honoring her through the plants, colors, and natural relationships that could hold something of her spirit, and maybe also something of what she gave to me.

Following the Threads

That process of following one detail into another has become the heart of The Wild Garden.

Each piece begins with an anchor, and that anchor might be a person, a flower, a place, a memory, or a word that captures the feeling I want the piece to hold. From there, I let the research guide me, but I don’t think of it as research in a cold or academic way. It feels more like listening. I’m paying attention to what belongs together, what grows in relationship, what naturally wants to be part of the same story.

I want to know where a plant is native, what grows alongside it, what pollinates it, what birds or butterflies or insects share its environment, and what colors and textures are part of that place. I want to understand the ecosystem around the original idea, because that’s usually where the meaning begins to deepen.

The more I follow those threads, the less each piece feels like a bouquet and the more it feels like a world.

A bouquet can be beautiful, but an ecosystem has a different kind of life to it. It has relationships. It has movement. It has things supporting one another in ways that might not be obvious at first. When I’m building a composition, I’m trying to bring some of that life into the piece, so the final artwork feels rooted rather than arranged.

That matters to me because I think people are like that, too.

We’re not one isolated thing. We’re shaped by our families, our histories, our landscapes, our losses, our joys, the gardens we walked through, the kitchens we sat in, the stories we inherited, and the things we learned to love because someone else loved them first. So when I’m painting these pieces, I’m not only thinking about the flower at the center. I’m thinking about the world around it and how that world can help express something about a person that a literal portrait might never be able to hold.

Painting Portraits Without Faces

At some point, I realized The Wild Garden wasn’t really a collection about flowers, even though flowers are the first thing you see.

It’s a collection about people.

The flowers are the language, but the people are the meaning underneath. Each piece begins with someone I love, or someone whose presence has shaped me, and then it grows outward through plants, place, color, symbolism, and memory. The piece inspired by my mom began with the green orchid and the feeling of abundance. One of my grandmothers came through purple irises and the word restore, and I can still see those irises so clearly in my mind. My Nana’s piece began with yellow roses, Italy, optimism, and mimosa flowers, which are connected to International Women’s Day there. One sister’s piece is rooted in Puerto Rico, hibiscus, and courage. Another piece for a different sister grew from lilies and native plants closer to home, because home is such a strong part of who she is.

Each one holds something different, and each one reminds me that a portrait doesn’t always have to show a face.

Sometimes a portrait can be made from the things a person loved, the place they came from, the colors that feel like them, or the word that rises to the surface when you think about who they are. Sometimes it can hold a feeling more honestly because it isn’t trying to explain everything.

I think that’s part of why these pieces feel so personal to me. They’re not meant to capture the whole of a person, because I don’t think any artwork can really do that. But they can hold one meaningful part of someone’s essence, one little piece of their story translated through the language of nature.

A flower, a memory, a place, a word, a feeling, all gathered into a world that can keep blooming.

Why Native Plants Matter

The native plant research has become one of the most important parts of this collection, not only because it gives each piece a sense of place, but because it keeps reminding me that beauty is never separate from relationship.

Native plants belong to a specific landscape. They support particular pollinators, insects, birds, and wildlife. They’re part of a system that has developed over time, and when you begin to pay attention to those relationships, you start to see the natural world differently. You stop seeing a flower as a single beautiful thing and start seeing the whole network around it.

The flower, the moth, the butterfly, the soil, the bird, the season, the climate, the place itself. Everything is connected, and every small part has a role to play in the larger story.

That feels deeply connected to the way I think about people.

We’re shaped by our own ecosystems, too. By the people who cared for us, the places that held us, the stories that were passed down, and the cultures, landscapes, and homes that formed us in quiet ways. Even our memories are relational. They attach themselves to objects, scents, songs, recipes, colors, and flowers until those things become more than what they are.

A rose isn’t just a rose if it grew in your grandmother’s garden. A hibiscus isn’t just a hibiscus if it carries the feeling of a place your family comes from. An orchid isn’t just an orchid if it brings you back to your mother.

That’s why native plants matter so much in this work. They help me honor not only the person, but the place, the context, and the relationships around them. They give the piece roots.

What Viewers See

One of the most meaningful things about sharing this collection has been hearing how people respond to the work before they know the story behind it.

Someone will be drawn to a piece because of a flower, a color, a movement, or a feeling they can’t quite explain. Then they’ll tell me it reminds them of someone. A mother. A grandmother. A sister. A garden they grew up around. A place they haven’t been to in years, but still somehow carry.

And when I tell them that these pieces are actually about people, and about the way certain people make us feel, something seems to open.

The work becomes less about decoration and more about recognition.

I think we all have memories like that, memories that live inside small details. The plant on a windowsill. The flowers someone always brought inside. The scent of something blooming at a certain time of year. The garden someone tended without ever making a big deal about it. These details may seem ordinary when we’re living inside them, but later they become sacred in their own quiet way.

That’s part of what I hope people feel when they see The Wild Garden. I hope they feel beauty first, because beauty matters, but I also hope they feel invited to look a little longer, to wonder what’s beneath the surface, and maybe to remember the people and places that live inside their own stories.

Looking Ahead

The Wild Garden is still growing, and I think that’s part of why it feels so alive to me.

There are more pieces I want to create, more women I want to honor, more plants and ecosystems I want to understand. I’m currently working on another piece connected to my mom, inspired by a night-blooming cereus she’s kept alive for years. It only blooms at night, often in September, and by morning the flower is gone. There’s something so tender and fleeting about that, the kind of beauty you have to wake up for, the kind you could miss if you weren’t paying attention.

That feels like its own kind of lesson.

The more I learn about nature, the more I learn about people, and the more I think about the people I love, the more reverence I have for the natural world. It keeps giving me new ways to understand memory, connection, care, and the quiet ways we continue to bloom through one another.

I imagine this collection continuing to unfold over time, piece by piece, each one becoming its own small ecosystem of story and meaning. Some may become originals, wall hangings, prints, or future collections, and some may become custom botanical portraits for others who want to honor someone they love through flowers, place, and memory.

I love the idea of artwork that can be personal without being obvious. Something that doesn’t need to explain itself to everyone who sees it, but quietly holds its meaning for the person who knows. Something rooted in research and symbolism, but also in feeling. Something that carries a person’s presence without needing to show their face.

Because sometimes the most meaningful portraits aren’t literal at all.

Sometimes they’re made from orchids, irises, roses, hibiscus, lilies, moths, butterflies, and the wild, living details that remind us who we love, where we come from, and what continues to bloom in us.

If you’re interested in exploring a custom botanical portrait inspired by someone you love, I’d love to create a piece rooted in your story, your memories, and the natural details that make them feel alive.