2: Not your childhood pressed flowers!
Hello, I’m Kathy and I’m addicted to art and learning. Ever since I was a little girl I’ve loved art, but never thought of myself as an artist. Until the last year or so…
Most of us are probably familiar with not thinking we're good enough or being too much of a perfectionist to even attempt making bad art on your way to discovering who you really are as an artist. I’m right there with you. But honestly, everyone can be an artist if they're willing to be imperfect and learn from 'mistakes'.
I’ve been a lot of different artist types since I started in 2020. I thought I would use watercolour forever (and I probably will) but now I’m not afraid to incorporate and play with other types of paint and materials — and use them all together.
I actually gave up representational art because I always felt I wasn’t good enough at it. I never wanted to recreate real life, I’ve always wanted to paint loose and flowy, using lots of bold colours. I love flowers, but I never feel I’m doing them ‘right’. It was making me not want to paint. Even when I sold my paintings, I recreated what I saw and didn’t move far from it.
I joined a facebook abstract group and felt like I had found home for a bit. But even in its boldness, the group leader basically wanted us to do her art, not our own. But, it really helped me to let go of the need to make representational art (something recognizable). I am not interested in extreme detail and I feel pretty unimaginative when it comes to mark making over top of an abstract, so I didn’t last long.
Then I found Catalyst, and I was literally catalyzed to try EVERTHING! The community was fabulous, Michelle Armas, the instructor, divinely welcoming of all styles, all colours, all sizes and I loved it there, but it was more money than I could afford when I thought about my addiction to supplies. So, I set off on my own. It’s lonelier, but I’m still in contact with many of the artists, so it’s all good.
Abstract has allowed me to run wild and run amok, freely creating messes and staining my hands on the regular. My true passion is creation, whether in words, music, or paint. All forms of art, but I’m all about learning, understanding, creating, conquering, and then moving on.
My latest obsession is using botanicals to press into paint. They often leave a lovely impression of their intricate beauty in the paint. Sometimes the impressions are barely visible and sometimes they’re absolutely unmistakable. Just like most of my favourite types of painting, there is very little control and I am happiest when I give up expectation and do it just to see what happens.
I, like probably every other kid in elementary school, learned to place autumn leaves between wax paper to preserve their colour. And I also learned how to flatten and preserve flowers within pages of a heavy book, but it wasn’t really art as much as following instructions. So, drying flowers and pressing leaves quickly got lost in all the other forms of crafts we learned in school when kids still had art classes… remember Godseyes yarn weavings?
I loved making things, but while it was fun, I was a kid and didn’t know how to make art of my own, and thus began my journey of recreating art, or essentially copying it and others who were the ‘true artists’.
In 2024, I first saw artist Maya Sozer place botanicals down on watercolour paper and add paint. I was intrigued and I knew I had to try it. I was just coming off of another obsession I had dallied in, what I call Waterflow Paintings (I’ll talk about that another time), and I could see how using lots of water and paint and metallics might finally make botanical pressings into art for me.
I collected grasses, leaves, and flowers on my walks around the pond outside my apartment window through September and early October. I played as wildly with them as I dared. At the end of the summer, there are a lot of dried grasses and leaves to choose from and they featured heavily in what I created.
As I am driven to, I used bold watercolours, with some metallic acrylics for the glimmer. The first botanical pressings I tried on were on cellulose paper and they were intense. Instantly hooked, I did loads of them on cotton paper and even mineral paper until October when I joined an abstract painting membership group called Catalyst (highly recommended if you want a fabulous teacher and community of like-minded and very kind people to nurture and cheer you on). I moved onto new techniques, but none have kept my attention, except alcohol ink painting (a topic for another blog). But over winter I kept going looking back at the photos I took and wishing for spring when new growth would allow me to pick it up again. This messy, uncontrollable style of art was calling to me.
I’ve been creating botanical pressings again this spring and now into summer. Right now, I think that dried botanicals work best because they love to soak up some of the water and they’re not as delicate as the greens and of spring and summer flowers and plants. I’ve spent the last few weeks gathering lots of early summer flowers, grasses and leaves and drying them. Mostly wild, but even some of my blooms and leaves taken from my patio flower baskets are ‘pressed’ into service.
It’s such messy art to create and I love it! In fact, in a few weeks (well, today actually because this is newly posting her in SubStack) I will be hosting a couple of artsy and craftsy friends to create some botanical pressings with me. It’s loads of fun. My friend Jocelyne is a graphic designer who also paints and dabbles in art, and my other friend Claudia is a quilter. We each teach each other something new and it’s great fun. Of course, there are always treats and coffee or tea, lots of conversation and laughs. I’ve known them both since shortly after I first moved to Moncton in 2009 and it’s always a pleasure to combine friendship and art.
Lately I’ve been actually writing down the ideas and what ifs that go through my mind when I’m obsessing over an art style. I have so many ideas and experiments to try, it’s going to take a lot of morning walks and drying botanicals to keep me busy over the winter!
Oooooo, new idea! Maybe I’ll try the waterflow method I did a lot of last year and try impressing botanicals into it? It might be cool, it might be awful, but I do love the challenge I give myself whenever I ask myself, “What if I…?”
I also want to try impressing on canvas, and for the first time ever, I feel like I’m ready to go bigger. I’m not sure how yet, but I will play with this idea… see what I mean? The possibilities are endless!
I fell in love with painting because I love to watch water and paint battle it out on paper, mineral paper, canvas, or whatever substrate I’m into at the moment. This battle creates new colours and new textures that I absolutely adore. Colour is everything and I cannot deny that using intense and bold colour is the central connecting theme in all I’ve created as an artist.
Will botanical pressings in paint be my forever thing? Probably not, but there is something about working nature into my art that resonates in my soul and I hope it continues forever. I am loving it every bit as much as when I tried it the first time. And if I keep coming up with new ideas, it feels like I could be happy doing it for a very long time. As long as I am evolving, I am happy.
I may be a fickle artist, but each time I move onto something new, I bring with me what I’ve learned. At this moment it feels like the best way for me to create abstract art using bold colour and still make it something more people can relate to because it is also recognizable. Maybe one day I will do commissions like so many other artist friends, who knows?!
May I listen to the siren call of colour for as long as I hear it beckoning me to try… there has been no stronger voice (so far) in my head.
Hi, I’m Kathy Mercure, I am a painter of mostly watercolour and a writer of mostly my thoughts. I am originally from Vancouver Canada, but have lived in lots of places and now in Moncton, NB. I’m combining my first love of writing, with my newer love of art, because I don’t want to either to think I’m cheating.