Garden of Eden — Exotic Blooms and Fantastical Flowers

In 2017 I stood in front of Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights in Spain.

It fills an entire room. The scale of it is overwhelming in the best possible way. And the longer you look, the more you see — worlds within worlds, creatures and flowers and figures all existing together in something completely fantastical. Pure imagination, completely unleashed.

I didn't know it at the time, but that painting stayed with me.

Four years later I sat down to paint Garden of Eden.

My Maximalist Australiana Period

From mid-2019 to late 2021 I was in a period I call my maximalist Australiana phase — and I was deliberately pushing everything as far as it would go.

Bigger. Denser. More colourful. More imaginative. I was working on large scale pieces, sometimes across two sheets of paper joined together, letting the compositions fill as much space as I could give them. Everything I was making at the time had this quality of abundance — like I needed to get something out that had been building for a long time.

I wanted to see what happened when I stopped editing myself. When I followed the idea all the way to the edge instead of pulling back to something safer or more restrained.

Garden of Eden was the result.

Painting From Imagination, Not Observation

I've always painted flowers. But the way I painted them for Garden of Eden was different.

These weren't flowers I was looking at. These were flowers I was imagining — highly stylised, larger than life, freed from any obligation to look like anything real. Proteas, banksias and waratahs were still there as the foundation, because those are the shapes I know best. But I pushed them into something more fantastical. Bigger blooms. More exaggerated detail within the petals and foliage. Shapes and forms that exist in a world of their own.

I also wanted colour that felt exotic and elevated rather than literal. Not the colours Australian flowers actually are, but the colours they could be if you let your imagination take over. Jewel tones. Deep vivid hues. Unusual combinations that feel emotionally charged rather than decorative. Colourful but not garish. Exotic in an elevated way.

The goal was something immersive. A painting where the more you look, the more you find. Like standing in front of that Bosch painting in Spain — where every corner has something in it, where the whole thing is alive with detail and movement and imagination.

Exotic Blooms and Fantastical Flowers

These aren't flowers you'd find in a garden. They exist somewhere between observation and imagination — proteas, banksias and waratahs pushed past what they actually look like into something more heightened, more fantastical, more alive.

The blooms are bigger. The detail within each petal and leaf is more exaggerated. The colour has been freed from anything realistic — jewel tones, deep vivid hues, unusual combinations that feel emotionally charged rather than decorative. Colourful but not garish. Exotic in an elevated way.

The hero piece — the Garden of Eden Abstract Wall Art Print — was painted large scale across joined sheets of paper. It's dense, layered and full of movement. The kind of composition where every time you look at it you find something you hadn't noticed before. It was licensed on bedding and sold out completely — which said everything about how people responded to it.

The Collection Grew

Garden of Eden started as one painting but the collection has grown significantly since then.

Wild Proteas — one of the most loved designs in the entire studio — is part of this collection. The original sketches were drawn back in 2015, but I didn't fully develop it into a print design until 2018. It has since been licensed for fabric, bedding, cards and a wooden homewares range, and remains one of the most commercially successful designs I've made.

Botany Blooms and Protea Australis round out the collection — each painted in 2019, each carrying the same maximalist spirit in slightly different directions.

Together these designs span art prints, tea towels, silk scarves, notebooks, coasters, card sets, bookmarks and gift sets. Everything comes from original paintings. Everything is made with the same attention to quality.

Who This Collection Is For

Garden of Eden is for someone who doesn't want something quiet on their wall.

It suits spaces that can hold colour and detail — a living room with neutral furniture, a creative studio, a bedroom that wants a focal point rather than wallpaper. It suits someone who finds joy in looking, who wants art that gives back something new every time they stand in front of it.

It's also one of the strongest gifting collections in the studio. The Garden of Eden Silk Scarf in particular — that maximalist composition on silk — is something genuinely distinctive. Not found anywhere else.