Imaginary florals created before breakfast
Week Seven is Lavender, Sand, Maroon & Hot Pink
Imaginary florals are on my mind this week and for our Coloricombo prompt I’m sharing the story of an outsider female artist. But first let me tell you about the live workshop that will happen this coming Saturday.
A few years back I did a folk-inspired,online live painting session with Windowsill workshops, hosted by the amazing Margo Tantau. I’m back with a brand new flower-inspired project that will cover stamping, printing and layering using simple materials and water based mixed media.
The workshop will take place on Saturday 21 February at 11am San Francisco time (2pm New York, 7pm London, 8pm Berlin, 11pm Dubai then 3am Singapore and 6am Sydney, both on Sunday).
Can’t make the live workshop? No problem, you can also sign up for the video recording that will be shared with you afterwards.
In case you missed my general newsletter I want to remind you about the February discount offer! All my listed courses and online store products are reduced for a limited time.
Get 20% off all my online courses here (use code CREATIVE20) and 20% off limited edition prints and silk scarves in my online shop here This offer expires on 21 February.
To tie in with this forthcoming Workshop I’m featuring colours from an artist who created rather unusual, imaginary floral artworks.
Anna Zemánková (1908-1986) was born in Olomouc, in the Moravian region of the current Czech Republic. She was a budding artist as a child, but ended up training as a dental technician before marrying an army officer in 1933. The next twenty-odd years were spent as a housewife, raising three sons and an adopted daughter.
When Anna was fifty, one of her children found an old suitcase filled with her early paintings and suggested for her to start drawing again.
She followed the suggestion in a rather unusual way, waking up at 3am and drawing for a few hours in an almost trance-like state whilst listening to classical music - Bach or Janáček. By 7am she’d finish and put away her creations of swirling, imaginary botanical creations: alien flowers, underwater plants, and strange organisms in pastel ink, and ballpoint pen, before starting her household chores.
Zemánková exhibited locally in Prague during the 1960s under Soviet rule and held her first open house in 1964. In the 1970s she started adding embroidery, collage and beadwork, layering texture onto her already intricate compositions, the precision learnt as a dental technician was evident in the way she made art. She said that her plants were “more beautiful than nature had ever created.”
International recognition came about in 1979 when she was included in the Outsiders Exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London. Zemánková suffered from depression and was very ill with complications from having diabetes, but continued to work until her death. In the following years, her work appeared at the Venice Biennale (2013 and 2024) and is held by the Centre Pompidou and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. She’s now recognised as one of the most important figures of art brut (aka outsider art), quite an achievement for someone who focussed on creating their own imaginary worlds before breakfast.
Read more about the artist here and see upcoming auctions (there’s currently three of her works at Christies) here. You can also watch a watch a video showing a retrospective exhibition here.
“Untitled”, pastel, India ink, ballpoint and embroidery on paper, Anna Zemánková, ~1970s
Colour Combination
The colours this week are Lavender, Sand, Maroon & Hot Pink. Use them along with a contrasting dark and neutral light colour to create an artwork in any medium or style. Know someone who might enjoy a weekly dollop of colour and creativity? Why not share this post with them?
Shapes
Along with the colour prompt I am including some shapes inspired by the artwork which you can download as a PDF and print out to use as you wish.
What a great and interesting story about Anna Z. Fascinating!