When I paint flowers, I don’t think of them as decoration.
They feel more like characters — ancient, knowing, full of unspoken language. Each one carries a different memory, a different story whispered through generations. In Slavic and other pagan traditions, flowers were not just ornaments of beauty. They were protectors, healers, and witnesses to ritual. I often imagine my botanicals as descendants of those beliefs — blooms that still remember.
In my work, floral motifs are not realistic studies of nature. They are psychological and symbolic forms — a vocabulary I keep returning to. Their roots belong to folk embroidery, to painted wood, to the margins of illuminated manuscripts. But they also live in the present, reinterpreted through neon light, metallic textures, and surreal contrast.
These are not innocent flowers. They bloom where myth and modernity meet.
The Ancestral Language of Botanicals
Across cultures, flowers have always carried meanings deeper than color or species. In Slavic folklore, the red poppy was tied to remembrance and blood; the periwinkle symbolized eternal love and protection; fern leaves, which never bloomed, were said to hide magical power. In the language of European floriography, each petal spoke — lilies for purity, violets for modesty, narcissus for self-awareness.
I find this system of symbolic botany endlessly fascinating. It’s like a coded emotional language — a visual poetry built from shape and hue. When I paint, I often combine these traditional motifs with surreal distortion: roots that intertwine like veins, blossoms that resemble eyes or wounds, stems that twist into gestures.
It’s a way of reconnecting to ancestral art forms without imitation. I want the flowers to feel haunted by memory, but alive in their new context — part ritual, part rebellion.
Between Craft and Vision
Folkloric botanical art has always lived between worlds — craft and vision, ornament and expression. It was present in everything from handwoven linens to church murals, from embroidered aprons to village house façades. What fascinates me most is that these flowers were never “art” in the modern sense. They were made to accompany life — to bless, to protect, to celebrate.
When I paint, I try to capture that same energy — the intimacy of hands repeating a symbol until it becomes sacred through repetition. I think of my work as a continuation of that handmade lineage, though filtered through a more contemporary vocabulary: metallic pigments, acidic greens, bruised pinks, the glossy sheen of modern surfaces.
The tension between tradition and modernity gives the paintings their pulse. The flowers are folkloric in structure but urban in light — they could exist on an altar or in a nightclub. That ambiguity feels honest to me.
The Spiritual Ecology of Folklore
What interests me most about folklore is its ecology — the way humans, nature, and the invisible were once inseparable. In pagan cosmologies, plants had spirit; they listened, healed, and warned. That belief system was dismissed over centuries as superstition, but I think it was just another form of wisdom — one that recognized emotion as part of nature.
I often think that painting is my way of restoring that connection. When I paint a flower, I don’t separate it from its emotional context. It’s not only a plant, but a vessel — for grief, desire, nostalgia, or transformation. Each stem or petal becomes a symbol of how inner and outer worlds overlap.
Sometimes the flowers look wounded, sometimes ecstatic — but always alive. They remind me that beauty in folklore was never static. It was expressive, protective, and deeply human.
Why Folkloric Botanicals Still Matter
In a world where images move fast and meaning is often lost, returning to ancestral symbols feels grounding. Folk botanicals remind us that beauty can still hold function — emotional, spiritual, even protective. They bring memory into modern space.
Original botanical paintings with folkloric elements speak to something collective. They connect the tactile, handmade past with the surreal present. They show that pattern and repetition — once seen as “craft” — can still hold intellectual and emotional power.
For me, painting these flowers is not nostalgia. It’s continuity.
It’s a way of saying that art can still grow from ritual, that even in neon light and synthetic color, something ancient can bloom again.
