It's one of those beautiful coincidences that make me smile. In the fall just before the flowers started loosing their colour I was picking them and pressing them in my dictionary. They turned this same gray-brown, but are nice and flat for sticking to something crafty.
I've been holding off on taking a whole flowerhead, but as luck would have it someone (or possibly the wind) placed one just outside the door.
I got in the habit of collecting plants - living or otherwise - in my first year of university. I was studying fine arts under the fantastic direction of Laine Dahlen. The living flowers, leaves, and whatever else I pick up I usually press, the dried stuff like this flowerhead I try to keep intact.
In Laine's classes the majority of our illustration lessons involved the beautiful decay found in plants found drying in their natural environment. He helped me find inspiration in stains on walls and dead plants. I came to love them as much as any painting or drawing and now keep an ever expanding collection in a dry-vase in my home.
Some crumble over time, some become elements in mixed media pieces, others gather dust in their vase and become even more lovely with age. Hydrangeas are one of my favourites because they seem to last forever and their form seems suggestive or supportive to my abstraction and ideation.
Such a globe perched atop a delicate stem.
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