Lilies

These had been waiting for a while.

I used to keep a vase of fresh white lilies on the dining table. They felt elegant, a little formal — the kind of flower that makes it feel like you have your life together.

But the scent was always too much. The last bunch I brought home had to be moved outside entirely. The bees were delighted.

And the white itself never quite settled. Too bright. Too sharp against the warmth of the wood. Beautiful, but slightly out of place.

So I stopped buying them.

But I missed them.

When I came back to them, I knew they couldn't be a direct copy.

 

 

I chose an off-white paper and worked into it, softening the tone and muting the brightness. Something warmer. More settled. As though they had always belonged to the space they were in.

That balance — between observation and adjustment — sits at the centre of how I work,  something that began to shift more noticeably in an earlier piece.

I'm guided by what I see in nature, but also by what I return to: old botanical studies, paintings where colour has softened over time, rooms where nothing feels newly placed. It's a way of working that has been there from the beginning, though I only properly recognised it later.

Paper allows for that shift. It gives space to alter, to tone down, to bring something closer to how it feels rather than how it appears at first glance.

Each petal was shaped slowly. Lilies don't allow for much rushing.

There is always a point where the making becomes quieter. Less about adding, more about noticing. Adjusting a curve, stepping back, returning again. Until eventually, it settles.

When I placed them in the green glass vase and set them on the table, it felt right in a way the fresh flowers never quite had.

The warmth of the wood. The softened ivory. The way the light moves across the edges in the afternoon.

No scent filling the room. No pollen scattered across the surface.

Just something held in place.

Quietly present.

Exactly as I had imagined them.

Rebecca.