Where Tradition Meets the Surreal
Many of the shapes in my artwork — petals, leaves, stems, dotted borders — echo the visual rhythm of traditional folk art. There is symmetry, repetition, and a sense of ornamentation that feels rooted in craft traditions. But the moment these familiar botanical forms encounter my palette, they slip into another world. Neon greens, burning pinks, electric blues, and bruised purples transform a folk-inspired structure into something dreamlike, hallucinatory, and emotionally heightened. The result is a visual language that honours tradition while breaking completely away from realism.
The Symmetry of Folk Art as Emotional Grounding
Symmetry has an anchoring effect. When a composition is balanced, the eye relaxes. Folk art has long embraced this stability, using mirrored petals, paired leaves, and repeated lines as a way to create harmony. In my work, I use similar structures, but not to achieve calm. Instead, symmetry becomes the foundation that allows the colours and surreal forms to behave wildly. It is the quiet stage that lets the psychedelic elements shine, vibrate, and expand without collapsing the image into chaos.
Acid Colours as a Portal into a Dream State
The intensity of colour is what pushes my botanicals away from reality. Lime greens radiate like chemical light, reds pulse with heat, and magentas seem to glow from within. These acid colours do not describe nature — they exaggerate its emotional potential. They turn a flower into a beacon, a leaf into a symbol, a stem into a channel of energy. Psychedelic colour creates a dream-state where familiar shapes gain new meaning, carrying a sense of magic, tension, and inner life.
When Folk Motifs Become Living Entities
In traditional folk patterns, florals remain decorative. In my work, they shift. They curl, stretch, multiply, and behave like creatures. Tentacle-like stems wrap around faces. Petals form halos. Beaded lines pulse like veins or signals. The folk-inspired shapes are still recognisable, but their behaviour is surreal. They no longer decorate the environment — they create it. They become the emotional architecture of the artwork, guiding the viewer through a landscape that feels both ancient and strangely alive.
The Emotional Charge Behind the Fusion
Combining folk symmetry with psychedelic colour is not just an aesthetic choice — it reflects the emotional duality at the core of my art. There is nostalgia for old symbols and patterns, but also a desire to push them into new forms. There is structure, but also instability. Softness blended with strangeness. The fusion creates artwork that feels familiar yet untethered, rooted yet floating. This place between the known and the unreal is where my botanicals grow, where memory meets imagination, and where colour becomes a kind of psychic weather.
