Even during the winter, there’s nothing wrong with looking forward to the spring. Luckily, we have this artist’s creations to get us ready for it.
Indeed, we can find plenty of warmth and comfort in Anne ten Donkelaar’s floral art. A mix between collage art, sculpture, and installation, her creations capture the very essence of spring-time. This is mainly done with the use of flowers—some preserved specimen, and some cut out from vintage books.
Having graduated in 2007 from the Utrecht school of The Art (NL), with a degree in 3D Product Design, Donkelaar’s floral art is in many ways a continuation of her surroundings, but with generous embellishment. Her material comes from secondhand books, as well as walks in the forest, meadows, and flower markets of Utrecht.
As such, her creative process revolves around her found material—a broken twig, a bumblebee, strangely grown weeds: “I don’t start with an idea in my head or a sketch on paper,” Donkelaar explained in an interview with Flower Magazine. “I follow the flowers and the colors I’m working with.”
“I love a flower with really long legs,” she adds. “It makes it more elegant somehow, almost as if it’s flying. I strip away all the leaves and let the flower stand out, stand tall.” By protecting her finds under glass, Donkelaar preserves her specimen in a state of eternal springtime. It’s the kind of state we could all aspire to…
