For her exhibition The More Things Change, painter Julie Battisti worked closely with Dunedin florist and flower grower Jolene of Estelle Flowers, building compositions from seasonal blooms, garden-grown stems and unexpected foliage before a brush ever touched the linen.
Flowers have long been central to Julie Battisti’s work, but the paintings in her latest exhibition begin well before she starts painting. Julie will usually have an idea for the shape of a composition, a colour combination or a particular flower she wants to explore, then talks it through with Jolene, who brings her own knowledge of what’s growing, what’s coming into season and what might add something unexpected.
“Working with her has helped push me in directions I may not have found on my own,” says Julie. “With Jolene’s help, the arrangements have grown more complex than anything I was making alone.”
The pair have worked together for around four years. Some flowers come directly from Jolene’s own garden, including copper chrysanthemums and black hellebores. She prides herself on growing unusual varieties she can’t easily source for her floristry, and works with specialist local growers for harder-to-find flowers. She finds other flowers through wholesalers, with friends and clients occasionally contributing from their own gardens too. Julie particularly loves flowers that arrive with leaves, stems and tendrils intact, giving her more to work with than a perfectly prepared bunch.
Once the flowers reach Julie’s studio, Jolene will often arrange them there. Julie then photographs the composition herself in natural light, moving elements around and waiting for the right light to fall across the petals. A single arrangement can result in several hundred photographs before she settles on the image she will paint.
Working together has also introduced Julie to plants she may not otherwise have chosen. Smokebush caught her attention for the way its foliage changes in the light, while leucadendrons brought in for one painting made such an impression that she later planted some in her own garden. In Eat Your Greens, dahlias and lisianthus share the canvas with kale, while elsewhere she has painted Garrya elliptica, copper beech, trillium and a white ‘Honeymoon’ tulip.
For Jolene, seeing flowers she has grown and arranged translated into Julie’s large-scale paintings brings another dimension to the collaboration. “There’s nothing better than having your florals photographed then painted, especially when you’ve grown them – next level!”
Julie’s paintings take months to complete, long after the original flowers have faded. That contrast sits at the heart of The More Things Change: fleeting botanical material enlarged and held still, recording not only a flower at one moment in time, but the hours spent looking at it.
