The Creative Gardener

An inspiring video that tells my story!

The story of my garden, how to appreciate and look at the season’s changes

and bring inspiration from outside to your art table

(The video is down bellow the post, but first read the story!)

“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance”

— Aristoteles

I always wanted to live out of the city and have my own vegetable garden, as I wanted to express myself and be an artist. Both happened and they are intrinsically together in my soul.

Dreams happen when you deeply believe and you put the effort into them. I live in an apartment and don’t own land.

However, a big land was resting and growing weeds just beside the building I live.

So I thought why not?

Me and my partner asked and the owner let us create our vegetable and flower garden. It’s an almost wild garden where we grow food. I wanted it to be wilder as possible and aligned with nature so wildlife can feel it is a safe place to come.

As I share the way I’m connected to nature and how I find my unique way of expressing hopefully I can inspire you to look at your surroundings, at what your heart loves, and what makes your soul sing. You will find there your true way to express, your unique voice.

When I started my art journey and dare myself to explore and grab a brush and paint I thought that I had to know how to draw, that I had to know perspective, color combinations, and how to draw flowers. I was meant to believe that art was supposed to be for those who graduated painters.

All these preconceptions were holding me back to express in my unique way.

I was creating but more expressing what I was learning, rather than bringing out my unique way and the things I needed to express.

The way I create is deeply influenced by nature, the walks in my surrounding,s and the work I do in the garden. The garden has a big role in the way I express my art but mostly the way I started to see art and accept my art as it is.

Imperfect, raw, and naive but deeply connected with me

As we see the seasons change in the garden we start to look that the splendor of the growing season, the beauty of the flowers season, and the bright colors that shine in the garden, come to an end, and the garden transforms.

The bright open yellow from the sunflowers that shine in Summer is transformed into brown, weird forms and a dried collapsed pod that brings me so many inspirations as the one I see in Summer and ignites my creativity to explore even further nature in a different way. the perfect petals from the cosmos, fade into a muted pink, to then fall and be part of the soil that will feed the next growing season.

At my art table, I explore new colors, new shapes, and new lines

Seeing all these transformations has helped me to accept the way I wanted to express myself, and my palette colors, to accept that they might change through the seasons and I love that.

It has been showing me that perfection is ephemeral and that beauty can be seen from another perspective and still be beautiful.

The dried weeds and the cardboard that we use to cover the soil are then brought to my work using brown paper as my favorite substrate to explore. The flowers I grow are used to manipulate paper with eco-printing techniques. The colors I see each season inspire the colors I will use in my journals.

I hope you dare yourself to play and maybe call yourself an artist, as you listen to your inner artist voice and look inside to see and explore what brings you the most joy.

This is the video “ The Creative Gardener” that I created for the Wanderlust Live event, sharing my garden, the inspiration that I bring from there to my art and how it has been the key to fully understanding what I wanted and needed to express. Click to watch the video.

The comments of people who were in Wanderlust's live were amazing. I loved making the video. It inspires me, but, looking at others’ reactions and how 8 mins of one video can impact people is absolutely amazing. Thank you all.

The Wanderlust Live event was created by Everything Art, hosted by Kaisa Avery and they are the creators of the most successful year-long mixed media class WANDERLUST.

I’m thrilled that I’ll be again a guest teacher for Wanderlust 2023 and I want to invite you to join me.

With Wanderlust 2024 you will have a year of learning and inspiration!

I can tell you the importance of community and what a beautiful and inspiring lineup of artists can make for our art practice.

It's life-changing what it can make to our art journey, our confidence, and art practice, being guided by other artists and knowing other ways to explore and create.

WANDERLUST 2024 will provide you with a consistent dose of inspiration and knowledge. Weekly lessons from various experienced Teachers can be your guarantee of the best year of art.