When Darkness Arrives Through Beauty
Dark fairytales rarely announce themselves through violence. Instead, they reveal unease through atmosphere—through the way a flower bends, the way a shadow lingers, the way something delicate becomes strangely alive. This is the essence of soft horror: fear without brutality, tension without overt threat. In my surreal artworks, botanicals play this exact role. They are not passive decorations but active emotional carriers, shaping the mood and mythology of the portrait. Through light, colour, and form, the flowers tell a story long before the viewer interprets the figure.
Flowers as Emotional Protagonists
In a dark fairytale, even the smallest object can become a symbol of transformation. A blossom becomes a warning; a vine becomes a memory; a petal becomes a spell. In my work, botanicals take on the role of protagonists as much as the faces do. Their shapes twist in intuitive, slightly uncanny ways, suggesting that the plant world is responding to the figure’s inner life. Some flowers glow as if lit from within, others stretch toward or away from the portrait, creating a dynamic emotional tension. They behave less like natural plants and more like characters from an inner myth.
Twisted Forms and Symbolic Instability
Fairytales often distort the familiar to reveal the truth beneath it. The twisting of my botanical forms performs that same symbolic function. A stem that bends too sharply or a petal that mirrors itself perfectly creates a subtle emotional rupture—enough to unsettle without frightening. This instability reflects the psychological complexity within the portrait. It hints at stories of desire, fear, memory, and renewal. The botanicals become visual metaphors for emotional states that are difficult to articulate, embodying a quiet unease at the edges of beauty.
Glowing Botanicals as Soft Horror Light
Light plays a central role in fairytale atmosphere, and in my compositions the botanicals often carry their own glow. They radiate in neon pinks, acid greens, soft blues, or shadowed violets, creating illumination that feels both magical and uncanny. This glow suggests a presence—a pulse—or even a secret. It pushes the image into soft horror territory, where the beauty is heightened to the point of strangeness. The flowers illuminate not the physical space, but the emotional one, casting symbolic light on the portrait’s interior world.
Mirrored Petals and the Logic of Dreams
Dreams and dark fairytales share a language of symmetry—forms that echo, repeat, or distort to convey meaning. My mirrored petals and doubled botanical structures use that dream-logic to build narrative. The symmetry feels intentional but mysterious, as though the plant is performing a ritual gesture. This mirroring blurs the boundary between decoration and storytelling. The botanical shapes begin to resemble masks, wings, or thresholds, suggesting transitions or inner shifts. Their balanced but otherworldly forms become portals into the subconscious.
When Flora Protects, Reveals, or Haunts
The relationship between the botanicals and the figure is never static. Sometimes the flowers wrap protectively around the portrait, acting like emotional guardians. Other times they rise upward in an exposing gesture, revealing vulnerability. In some pieces, the flora seems to haunt the figure, holding memories or unspoken truths. This shifting dynamic is what ties the artwork to the tradition of dark fairytales: the sense that the natural world is alive with intention, reacting to the emotional state of the protagonist.
Soft Horror as Emotional Honesty
Soft horror works because it speaks to something deeply human—the knowledge that our emotional lives contain shadows we rarely name. The botanicals in my work give form to these shadowed spaces. Their glow, distortion, and symbolic movement articulate what the figure cannot. They create a narrative that is psychological rather than literal, rooted in the complexity of inner experience. The horror remains soft, emerging from intuition rather than fear, beauty rather than violence.
The Fairytale Told Through Colour
Colour is the final storyteller. The palette shapes the mood of the scene: acid greens for instinct, deep reds for intensity, soft blacks for shadowed calm, electric pinks for emotional electricity. These tones connect the botanicals to the larger world of dark fairytales. Instead of forests or castles, the colours construct an atmosphere of symbolic depth. They guide the viewer through the portrait as though walking through an enchanted space—one built entirely from emotion and imagination.
When Botanicals Become the Voice of the Portrait
Ultimately, the botanicals in my surreal artwork act as narrators. They reveal what the figure holds inside: the story of their transformation, their longing, their tension, or their hidden clarity. They are storytellers from a dark fairytale world—soft, luminous, and uncanny. Through them, the portrait becomes more than a face; it becomes a myth. A quiet, symbolic narrative unfolds not through words, but through petals, shadows, and the colours that bind them together.
