Wildflowers Caught in the Sun

Although those hot summer days filled with long hours of bright sunshine seem to be over by now, I recently made good use of that last glut of sunlight to create a new series of sunprints.

In the past couple of years, I’ve been collecting wildflowers in road verges on routes that I often take. Whether that’s on my daily walk in the neighbourhood, on a hard shoulder along the A2 highway, or just on my way to do the shopping. I gave each specimen enough time to turn into nicely flattened shapes by drying them in books and flower presses, after which I started experimenting by exposing them to the sun. I really love some of the resulting shapes (like the umbellifers of the daucus carota, or ‘wilde peen’ in Dutch), though some others don’t seem to show their character anymore once flattened and printed. To give the prints a more ‘layered’ and contemporary feel, I also added some other materials, of which the perforated foil seemed to work best. I like to think of it as representing a honeycomb, which shows the connection between the bees and the crucial importance of wildflowers for their survival.

An overview of the printed species:

• Lythrum salicaria (purple loosestrife/grote kattenstaart)

• Filipendula ulmaria (meadowsweet/moerasspirea)

• Daucus carota (wild carrot/wilde peen)

• Grass (species unknown)

• Achillea millefolium (common yarrow/duizendblad)

• Angelica archangelica (wild celery/grote engelwortel)

• Daucus carota (wild carrot/wilde peen), umbels with flowers and curled up in their seed phase