The initial idea for this piece came from a gallery in Cornwall, where I bought a beautiful sculpture of  tall elegant imaginary flowers made from fabrics and wire.

On the last day of a subsequent visit to Paris, friends bought me a huge bunch of  flowers called ‘Ranunculus’, and the colours and shapes reminded me of the sculpture; so fabulous and varied, each flower wildly different from the last. On returning to my studio I painted French Flower Garden, the first of my flower garden paintings. The result was fantastical, exotic, and rather reminiscent of Indian miniatures. I added a collection of tiny birds, nesting and hiding on the stems and the branches and making the flowers seem all the more bizarre and strange. 

Continuing the bird theme.. on my last day of painting, my chicken, Charlie, jumped on the painting as it lay on the table and unceremoniously did a dropping in the middle of  the painting. There is now one flower within the piece without a stem.. this marks the spot where I collaged a very special flower to hide the spot where Charlie made his contribution!