Celebrate Women’s History Month with us in a painting workshop that brings together art, nature, and creative reflection to explore flowers and our connection to them.

A flower is a universally shared symbol of beauty. They take our attention wherever we find them – they are reminders of spring, of joy and pleasure. In Western society flowers are often associated with women and femininity. But flowers are complex and transcend the binary male-female dichotomy. Just like all plants, flowers can help us embrace the complexity and uniqueness within our human form. Much like us, every flower has its own weird and wonderful qualities that make it beautiful.

This workshop offers an opportunity to explore their features and histories to reflect on our personal and collective relationships with them. Situated in the Chelsea Physic Garden, we’ll be able to look closely at different species of flowers and gather direct inspiration from their forms, colours, and adaptations.

We’ll dive into the work of three significant female artists—Alma Thomas, Emily Kam Kngwarray, and Georgia O’Keeffe—who found inspiration in flowers and used them as a way to express identity, place, and emotion. Their work will guide us to see flowers as more than their physical forms.

Using the inspiration we’ve gathered from the Garden and the artists, you’ll create your own acrylic paintings on canvas, focusing on abstraction, intuition, and playful exploration.

About Babette Van Gerwen

Babette is a multi-media artist in East London working primarily with paint and found materials. Babette’s work investigates the importance of art as a means of exploring the vast variety in human identity and experience, beyond the linear structures and binaries imposed on us in our capitalist, heteronormative, patriarchal society. Art is a crucial means through which we can explore what otherwise cannot be expressed within our existing structures of communication.