Shining DESPAIR
Anna Talbot
Norway

Brooch “Pressed Flowers – Red”, 2024
Aluminium, brass, acrylic paint, steel, 70x4x12mm
Hand pierced and painted

Brooch “Pressed Flowers – Blue”, 2024
Aluminium, brass, acrylic paint, steel, 70x4x12mm
Hand pierced and painted

The series ‘Pressed Flowers’ is inspired by my memories of my grandfather’s garden from my childhood and the experience of picking, pressing and preserving flowers in herbariums.

In an increasingly fraught and divided world, I find solace and inspiration in the beauty of nature, the continuation and constant renewal of the natural world, often despite our attempts to destroy it. Taking inspiration from memories from my childhood, when things seemed simpler, easier and more direct and trying to capture these memories, the flowers, the moments through pressing the flowers, stopping time.

At the same time, the process of pressing the flowers also kills them, they are captured and preserved in-between, not quite alive and not quite dead – frozen in limbo forever.

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