Heat Wave

If you’re a flower maniac like me, you do your best to keep your eyes open when visiting someplace new. On this summer’s trip to France, the sun-burnt dry flowers caught my attention.

Last year, when my husband and I traveled to Seattle, I bought a dry flower bouquet for my sister. There were some beautiful shining flowers in the bouquet that looked like silver shells. I had no idea what those were, and then I immediately gave it away. However, during this trip in France, it must have been destiny, I found the same plant again growing around our summer house. Finally this time I know the name of the flower: Lunaria Annua. The silver shell is the seed pod of the flowers. When I kept looking more closely around the house, I found even more beautiful pale dried plants, such as valley of lily, poppy flower seed pod, and smoking tree.

When I put them all together, suddenly I realised why I always thought that the colour of France was caffe latte: it has nothing to do with coffee, it’s definitely about the natural environment! The colour of those dry flowers remind me of the city of Paris, so pale, and so warm, and so romantic. Then I made up my mind that I wanted to paint the dried flowers I got from the trip in France, trying to capture the summer temperature, and the pure romance from those dead beauties.

Something a bit old, but the ideas are still new