Blue Poppy 17

Tonight I was back at The Hill House for the opening of an exhibition by the artist Carol Taylor.

The enchanting, fragile, silent world of flowers

Carol is a Scottish artist, who studied at Edinburgh College of Art and has a Masters Degree in Painting from the Royal College of Art London. She works full-time in her studio which is based in a wee village in the hills on the edge of the Scottish Borders region.

She has created a wonderful exhibition of limited edition, signed, giclee prints from a combination of photographs taken of dried plant specimens, photographed through a light microscope. Some of the dried specimens of native Scottish plants such as the Red Corn Poppy or the little Woodsia Alpina Fern, (sadly now extinct) are well over 100 years old, and are from the Herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh.

The prints of the beautiful Himalayan Blue Poppy were made from two varietes she has grown in her own garden, then picked, pressed and dried. She then mounted the dried specimens of the Meconopsis and photographed them through her Nikon camera, with a macro lens, taking care with lighting to give the translucent quality of the petals.