As a young girl, Subhashini Vinay often found herself in the garden, noticing with admiration, the bright and graceful flowers and plants – her inseparable relationship with nature has gone on to inform and inspire her now Instagram-famous Garden Art project.
The project bursts into full bloom
“I had sketched a woman’s face and wanted to add a nose ring which looked unique. So I decided to go for a stroll and saw a bougainvillea flower that looked like a nose ring to me,” Subhashini says, explaining how the first Garden Art piece came to be. “ The moment I placed it on the sketch it felt magical. The floral nose ring stood out and I knew I had discovered a new language.”
Garden Art is now nearly three years old and has branched into a bigger and more varied form of art with nearly 350 pieces in the collection. Subhashini uses a combination of sketches embellished with unique botanical elements, working mostly with flowers that are wilting and withering. Some of the fresher pieces used are then carefully stored for later use.
“I believe nature has a treasure trove of stories hidden in it and that it is my artistic duty to find and bring that out in the form of my art.”
Reconnecting with nature
Subhashini’s art is driven by her fascination and joy of flowers, but also by a sense of agency to encourage others to see the beauty around them.
Consequently, she’s writing a book on Garden Art to convey how it has refined how she looks at the world. “It’s a new colourful language where I define the things and objects we know in the words of flowers and leaves” she says.
She hopes that it will help others view the world through a different lens as well, to appreciate the colours of flowers and leaves, and to remind people of the beauty and joy that is reflected to us through nature.
“If my art can kindle a person to grow a garden and admire the green happiness it brings, I will be overjoyed,” she says. “We currently live in a society where we shun trees because they shed leaves and litter our concrete pavements and blocks our drains. We rarely grow plants because it requires our time and attention. I wish we cross these barriers and have at least a small kitchen garden in a corner.”
Indeed.
Check out more of Subhashini‘s work here.
Written by Additi Seth
All images credit: Subhashini Chandramani
