Friday, July 20, 2012

Delicate Details


Horse Chestnut

Rosa

Until recently I had never heard of Mary Delany, an 18th-century collage artist and all-around fascinating person. Mary spent time with the influential artists, writers, scientists and royalty of her time and, in her 70s, began creating delicately collaged botanical illustrations of flowers. Over the course of the next decade she had produced almost 1000 of these images. I'd love to see them in person one day to really appreciate the layers of collage since it's so hard to capture that in a reproduction. The British Museum houses a lot of her work. A good excuse to go to London?

2 comments:

  1. I really like both of the collages you picked. The horse cheshnut is so delicate. I am reading about her live now. Her first husband was about 4o years older then she was. She did not like him much, but family pressures made her marry him. It sounded like she kept her dignity in the marriage. She used it to grow into her independence.

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  2. She sounds fascinating. I'd love to see what the collages are made up of.

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