A Blooming Riot

A Blooming Riot began with just two paintings.

From the very start, there was something about them that felt connected — as though they were already in conversation with one another. After completing those first two pieces, I knew instinctively that they didn’t want to stand alone. They were asking to become part of something larger. That was the moment when A Blooming Riot shifted from individual works into a fully formed collection.

Creating a coherent body of work was important to me. I wanted the voice and story to travel across multiple paintings — to feel like a family rather than a set of separate ideas. Each piece needed to belong to the others, while still holding its own personality. Together, they form a shared emotional landscape.

This collection was created over the course of several months, during October and November, and officially launched on the 1st of December. It consists of thirteen original works, varying in size and surface: some on canvas, some on paper, and two on wood.

Why Flowers?

Flowers felt like the most natural language for this collection.

I have always loved flowers — wildflowers, tree blossom, garden blooms — and I find them endlessly inspiring. They bring me genuine joy. But beyond that personal love, flowers carry a universal meaning. We give them to people to celebrate, to comfort, to apologise, to grieve, to remember. We decorate our homes with them. We arrange them carefully. We let them be wild. They show up for us at pivotal moments in our lives. Many years ago I trained as a flower therapy healer because I really believe in the power of healing through flowers. Since then I have also gone on to experiment and learn the art of apothecary, I love the idea of using flowers and plants to create tincture’s that will aid in healing.

For me, flowers are emotional messengers and powerful healers.

In A Blooming Riot, I wanted to share that layered relationship we have with flowers — how they can hold joy and sorrow, quietness and loudness, softness and defiance, all at once and still aid in healing within a room. The way we use flowers in our lives mirrors how we experience emotions: sometimes carefully contained, sometimes overflowing.

Intuitive Process, Materials, and Layered Storytelling

My process is deeply intuitive. While I knew I wanted to create a collection centred around flowers, with recurring elements such as unusual vases, teapots, and hints of landscape to suggest place, each painting was allowed to evolve organically.

I work primarily with acrylic paints and oil pastels, building up surfaces through layers of colour, texture, and line. One piece in the collection was created using gouache paints alongside Caran d’Ache Neocolor pastels, allowing for a softer, more fluid quality within the wider family of work. Texture is essential to my practice — some paintings contain layers of paper beneath the paint, while all are finished with bold, sketch-like oil pastel marks drawn directly onto the surface.

Texture is incredibly important to me. Many of these works contain layers of paper beneath the paint, building up history and depth before colour even arrives. Over the top, I use thick oil pastels, sketched and worked into the surface, allowing line to sit boldly and unapologetically against colour.

This layering is essential. It reflects how I experience the world: not flat or singular, but textured, overlapping, and alive.

Music and stories often accompany my painting process. I frequently listen to the radio as a soft background presence, or audiobooks — absorbing other narratives while creating my own. That combination of external storytelling and internal expression weaves itself into the work, whether consciously or not.

Emotional tone while creating the work

Creating A Blooming Riot felt like a celebration, but also a place of comfort and play. There was a sense of joy running through the process — the kind that comes from allowing yourself to experiment, to follow instinct, and to see what happens when you trust your own creative voice.

At the same time, there were moments of resistance. One of the paintings in particular took longer to resolve and pushed back against me. Completing it required patience, persistence, and a willingness to stay with the discomfort rather than abandon it. Getting there in the end became part of the story of the collection — a reminder that even joyful bodies of work can contain challenge, growth, and quiet determination.

That balance — celebration alongside effort, play alongside perseverance — lives inside the finished pieces.

A Blooming Riot embraces chaos, colour, and intensity. Colour, for me, is always feeling. It carries emotion before words arrive. These flowers are intentionally loud. They are bold. They want to be seen. They are not apologising for taking up space.

This is where the “riot” lives.

The rebellion within these florals is tied closely to my own experience as a neurodivergent artist. The work reflects a refusal to be reduced, softened, or made smaller to fit neatly into expectations. It speaks to the importance of standing out, rather than shrinking yourself to suit systems or belief structures that place people into narrow boxes.

These paintings are an encouragement — a visual reminder that there is power in being visible, expressive, and fully yourself.

Imaginary flowers and personal mythology

Many of the flowers in this collection are imaginary.

While their colours and shapes might echo real blooms, the way they present themselves on the canvas is intentionally otherworldly. I introduce marks, lines, and textures that don’t exist in nature — gestures that disrupt realism and invite something more magical to emerge.

This is the part of my practice where spirituality and imagination intertwine. I love magic, symbolism, and myth-making, and those influences naturally find their way into my work. These flowers are not botanical studies; they are extensions of myself.

Each piece carries fragments of personal mythology — an inner landscape translated through colour, mark, and form. The flowers become characters, holding emotion, memory, and possibility.

Time, memory, and emotional space

I don’t believe we have to live strictly in one moment.

In A Blooming Riot, there is space for past, present, and future to coexist. The layered surfaces reflect this — histories beneath the paint, present gestures on top, and open-ended narratives moving forward. I’m interested in how we can gently reach into memory while still grounding ourselves in the now, without becoming stuck or rigid.

This way of thinking — fluid, overlapping, non-linear — feels natural to me, and it’s something I hope viewers can sense when they encounter the work.

The collection holds both ease and effort — moments of flow alongside moments of persistence — reflecting the reality of creative life.

It quietly signals maturity as an artist.

Encountering the work

When someone encounters A Blooming Riot, I hope they feel joy first — an immediate emotional lift. But beyond that, I hope they feel encouraged. Encouraged to stand out. Encouraged to be bold. Encouraged to find peace with who they are, exactly as they are.

If the work offers a moment of recognition — a sense of being seen, or permission to exist more fully — then it has done its job.

These paintings are an invitation to take up space, to embrace colour, to allow complexity, and to honour the many layers that make us human.

The collection today

A Blooming Riot was launched online through Instagram and TikTok, following a period of shared process, build-up, and live conversations around the work. The collection is currently on display in my gallery space at Hayle Emporium, where viewers can experience the pieces together as a unified body of work.

Thirteen paintings. One family. A shared voice.

Explore the work

You can view individual pieces from A Blooming Riot in my artwork archive, and follow my ongoing creative process through social media and future collections.

Thank you for stepping into this riot with me.