Flowers of Oz — The Story Behind My Most Loved Collection
Where It Started — Long Before 2017
There's something I've always known about myself: Australian native flowers are my constant.
Not a phase. Not a style I grew into. A constant. From the earliest art I ever made, through decades of painting, through every medium I tried — the flowers were always there. Waratahs. Banksias. Gum blossoms. Kangaroo paw. And proteas — always proteas.
Flowers of Oz, the collection I painted in 2017, was a continuation of all of that. But it was also something more. It was the moment I stopped holding back.
Where It Started — Long Before 2017
I got back into painting seriously in the mid-nineties, when my youngest son was born in 1996. For the first time I had quiet stretches at home, and I filled them the way I always had — making things, painting, sewing and all manner of arts and craft.
Through all of it, the subject never changed. Australian native flowers. Always.
I also volunteered once a week teaching art at my children's school during those years — which kept me connected to the joy of just making, without overthinking it. That feeling stayed with me.
Art had always been a deep love. But I'd never turned it into a career, even as I continued painting through everything — raising children, studying textile design in 2011, learning surface pattern and print. The medium shifted. The flowers didn't.
A Note on Proteas and Australian Natives
People sometimes ask whether my proteas are Australian or South African. It's worth answering properly.
Waratahs, banksias, grevilleas, hakeas — these are all Australian native flowers, endemic to this country. And they all belong to the same ancient plant family as proteas: the Proteaceae. It's one of the oldest flowering plant families on earth, with hundreds of species native to Australia. The flowers look related because they are related.
I've had a particular love of proteas my whole life. The architecture of them. The layers. The way they're simultaneously bold and intricate. Painting them never gets old.
Painting Something Truly Mine
By 2017 I'd been painting Australian natives for over twenty years. But I hadn't fully backed myself.
Most people working in surface pattern and print design at the time were using Illustrator — vector art, clean lines, computer-aided design. Professionally, that was the norm. But it was never me.
What I paint is layered and expressive and unmistakably done by hand. The marks a brush makes. The way colour builds up through layers. The looseness and energy that comes from painting freely. None of that translates to a computer.
So I made a decision. I was going to paint a collection entirely my way — not to sell, not to license (I didn't even know what art licensing was at the time), not to please anyone. Just to see if I could make something that felt genuinely, completely mine. To test whether my style — the real one, not a softened version of it — could hold its own.
I invested in myself. I took a real chance. And I painted.
The Collection
I painted eight pieces in the Flowers of Oz series. Five of them became the foundation of this collection — the ones I felt were ready to share. The others I've held onto.
The hero painting was Bouquet of Oz. That's the one that felt most like the collection in a single image — full, bold, layered, unmistakably Australian. Bush Bounty followed. And alongside the original Flowers of Oz series I was also developing Flowers of the Desert at the same time — a related body of work that grew from the same creative energy.
I painted them with no plan for what they'd become. They were experiments. Personal work. Things I made because I had ideas I needed to explore.
Then people responded to them — and everything changed.
From Art Prints to Fabric & Beyond
I painted these purely for the joy of it. That was the biggest happiness — making work that felt completely honest and true to who I am as an artist.
And then it multiplied.
One of the original paintings from the series became a hero design for a major fabric and bedding collection — it ended up on fabric, bedding, scrapbooking paper and homewares. People wanted to buy them as art prints. The response kept growing. What started as intuitive, passionate painting became something that other people connected with deeply enough to want in their homes, on their walls, in their everyday lives.
That validation — that people loved what I loved enough to invest in it themselves — that changed everything.
The Art Prints
The most loved products from this collection are the art prints — fine art reproductions of the original paintings, printed on quality archival paper in A4, A3 and A2. They hold the depth of colour and the texture of the original brushwork. That matters to me.
The key prints from this collection:
→ Bouquet of Oz Botanical Art Print — the hero of the collection
→ Bush Bounty Botanical Wall Art Print — rich, layered, warm
→ Native Garden Floral Wall Art Print — lush and full of movement
→ Flowers of Desert Art Print — bold colour, painted alongside the original series
→ Bush Bounty Midnight Botanical Print — deeper, moodier, just as expressive
Beyond the Prints
The collection has grown well beyond wall art.
The Flowers of Oz Tea Towel Set is one of the most popular gifts — something beautiful that gets used every day. The wooden brooches are small and personal. The scarves, notebooks and card sets all come from the same original paintings.
Quality materials only. Made with care. That hasn't changed since 2017.
Styling Flowers of Oz at Home
The colour is bold but warm — rich pinks, deep greens, terracottas — so these prints anchor a room rather than compete with it.
One large print — An A2 above a console or sofa. Let it do the work on its own.
A pair — The Australian Native Flowers Wall Art Print Set is designed to hang together. Two prints, same collection, side by side.
The whole collection — A print on the wall, the tea towel in the kitchen, a brooch on your coat. Because everything comes from the same paintings, it all works together without trying.
Still Growing
Flowers of Oz isn't a closed chapter. New paintings become new products. There's more coming.
If you want to know when new pieces land, join the list. New art, no noise.
Shop the Flowers of Oz Collection
Art prints, tea towels, scarves, brooches, notebooks and card sets. All hand-painted. All made with care.
Also worth exploring:
Protea Magnifica Collection — dramatic protea art with jewel-tone depth
Garden of Eden Collection — lush, layered florals with a paradise palette
All Australian Botanical Art Prints — the full range
