Collections – Celtic Wildflowers

When updating this blog today I realised that I had not mentioned the Celtic Wildflowers collection. It was designed at the request of Sutherland Shire Council Cultural Planning and Events Unit, for their Heritage Festival – Parc Menai Celtic Festival 7-9th March, 2003. The ‘brief’ was to provide ‘Celtic’ artwork using wildflowers from Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall, Isle of Man & Wales as these were the 5 regions being represented at the festival.

The 26 piece “Celtic Wildflowers Collection” took nearly 12 months in research, design and printing/painting.

It involved considerable research of flora of the wildflowers of – Wales, Ireland, Scotland, Isle of Man and Cornwall. It also included an Australian Celtic Banner and Australian Celtic knots with links to Australian wildflowers as the Festival was designed to celebrate the Celtic heritage of many Australians in the Sutherland Shire.

The research included contacting photographers in the UK who graciously helped me out with some of the more obscure wildflower images. I visited many local ‘Open Gardens’ that Spring as many of these contained flowers from the UK and managed to get photographs as resources. Knotwork is interesting and for the idea of the never-ending ‘circles or lines’ – I imagined and even used small ropes! For the Glen Innes piece knotwork I thought of Gum leaves intertwining.

For the floral ’emblems’ section I chose a particular species for the central flower which is either the ‘symbol’ for the Celtic Region represented. The idea for this design was based around Gothic style window shapes to frame each wildflower.

The Australian set  of this collection highlighted four well known Australian Wildflowers with knotwork.

In 2004 I was invited to bring the collection to exhibit at the Australian Celtic Festival in Glen Innes and had such a nice time – always worth a visit! The Australian Celtic – Glen Innes Wildflowers Banner was designed for the 2004 Australian Celtic Glen Innes Festival Exhibition using wildflowers from that region.

I think my favourite pieces are the Wildflower Circles – where chose a particular species for the central flower which is either the ‘symbol’ for the Celtic Region represented, is endemic or commonly found there and the other wildflowers  surrounding them are six wildflower species commonly found or in some cases endemic to that region.

The full collection can be seen over at my main website – Lynette Weir.