Over the past few weeks, I’ve continued working on my 100 Days of Play project — a daily painting practice that has gradually become something more considered.
What began as a way to loosen up and explore has started to take shape as a body of work, rooted in botanical observation, repetition, and decorative form.
Alongside this, the shift into spring has been impossible to ignore. I’ve been spending more time in the garden, clearing beds, noticing what’s returning, and preparing for the season ahead.
It feels quietly connected to the work. The same sense of anticipation, of things emerging slowly, and not all at once.
Working in small formats has encouraged a different kind of attention. Each piece is contained, but together they begin to speak to one another, colours shifting, shapes repeating, small decisions carrying forward into the next painting.
I’ve found myself returning to the same flowers, primroses, auriculas, pansies. Not to replicate them, but to understand them more fully. With each version, something settles.
Flowers in Vessels
Alongside these smaller studies, I’ve also begun to explore the work at a slightly larger scale.
These pieces feel different, a little more considered, but still rooted in the same language that is emerging through the daily practice.
I’ve been particularly drawn to the idea of flowers in vessels, something contained, held, and composed. They feel closer to finished pieces, though still part of the same process of exploration. There is something timeless about the blue and white and I am enjoying the neutrality of it paired with the bold backgrounds, colourful florals and patterned borders. The vessels themselves feel like a natural place to hold a sense of history, a surface onto which stories, references, and influences can quietly sit. It’s something I feel increasingly drawn to, and would like to continue exploring.
Beyond the Frame
I’ve also started to play with the idea of pattern extending beyond the central image, building a surrounding world rather than a single framed moment.
It’s something I’d like to continue developing, allowing the smaller paintings to expand outward into something more immersive and decorative.
With the arrival of the Easter holidays, the days have taken on a slightly different rhythm, and I’ve found myself moving a little more slowly through the project.
I’m now just over a third of the way through, around Day 35, and beginning to notice a quiet shift in direction. The work feels more connected, more assured, as small ideas start to carry forward from one piece to the next. I’m continuing to follow where it leads.
Recent pansy posies have been a particular favourite, small, but full of character, their bright little faces take me back to my childhood and are a reminder of how much can be discovered within a single subject.
