A garden indoors

Artist Flora Roberts brings the outside in with her beautiful murals and range of floral-inspired wallpapers – all enchanting botanical creations that envelop us in flowers

Artist Flora Roberts captures colour, light and texture of flowers in her beautiful wall coverings

What is so cool about the Dutch still lifes is that they painted tulips with a dark background, which makes the flowers look like light bulbs

I love following flowers as they come into season – I feel more connected to them and the colours are appropriate for the time of year

Decorative painter and designer Flora Roberts longs for foxgloves but is in the throes of painting tulips. “I do like foxgloves, they are so cute and have all those dots,” she says. “Roses are a challenge. Dahlias are satisfying.”

Flora paints flowers from life every day from spring to the end of summer and can be impatient for flowers to grow. When they do emerge, she finds herself in a flurry of paint and petals to catch them before they wither and fade. “I worry that the flowers are dying and I have to paint them,” she says, surrounded in her studio by colourful ribbons and cuttings of bluebells, forget-me-nots, cow parsley, apple blossom, peonies, iris, aquilegia, buttercups, violas and clematis. “I love following the flowers as they come into season – I feel more connected to them and I find the colours and textures I’m using are appropriate for the time of year.”

Her simple yet beautiful acrylic and watercolour paintings are usually the germinations of great, elaborate wallcoverings – either privately commissioned murals or, more recently, wallpaper. Flora launched her first collection of wallpaper last autumn and will add four new designs every September when plants begin to retreat once more.

Colour, essence and light are wonderfully captured in Flora’s work as she is fascinated by atmosphere and inspired by historic textiles and paintings. Her botanical wallpapers bring the garden indoors and make one feel they are among the flowers. This is most felt in her hypnotic Midnight Garden wallpaper, which is an interpretation of the painting Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose by John Singer Sargent of two small girls holding Chinese lanterns in a garden at dusk. “I did

a design based on the colours and feeling of the painting,” she says. “The colours are similar, but I changed the lilies to foxgloves. The flowers glow and twinkle in the evening light.”

This spring and summer Flora is experimenting with new wallpaper designs. “I’m thinking possibly hollyhocks. Their status has changed recently. They’re now cool,” muses Flora. “Hollyhocks remind me of the 1920s. They’re nostalgic. I would like to incorporate sunflowers into a design too. There are so many varieties of sunflower. Nasturtiums also, and maybe roses. Possibly magnolias.”

Flora grew up on the Scottish borders and studied printed textiles at Glasgow School of Art before going on to do an MA in mixed media textiles at the Royal College of Art in London. She began her career working on textile designs for the fashion industry but after restoring murals at her sister’s house, commissions came in for private houses and other commercial projects. She has also designed fabric and wallpaper for companies such as Lewis & Wood.

For one mural commission, Flora painted a cupboard with a design inspired by Dutch old master tulip paintings. “What is so cool about the Dutch still lifes is that they painted tulips with a dark background, which makes the flowers look like light bulbs,” she says. Indeed, backgrounds are as important to Flora as the plants in focus and the colours will change according to whether she is in the city or the country. When she was a teenager, Flora’s family moved to Dorset and she returns often to take inspiration – and specimens – from her parents’ garden. “My mother has the perfect parrot tulips,” she says. “She has lovely black tulips too, which are really fun to paint. Lots of oily blues. They are like the surface of a starling.” Flora will no doubt capture those iridescent ruffles in her inimitable style before they too depart for another year.

USEFUL INFORMATION

Find out more about Flora’s work at floraroberts.co.uk. You can also find a full range of Flora’s wallpapers at hamiltonweston.com

I did a design based on the colours and feeling of Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose but changed the lilies to foxgloves. The flowers glow and twinkle in the evening light

This image For this cupboard commission Flora based her mural design on Dutch still life paintings from the 17th century. Facing page Artist Flora Roberts in her Shepherd’s Bush studio. A new painting of an Icelandic poppy stands out against a roll of her stunning Midnight Garden wallpaper, which was inspired by a John Singer Sargent painting.

Flora adds the finishing touches to her painting of a chrysanthemum, giving this as well as anemones, narcissi tied in ribbon and other plants, a real sense of movement on the paper.

Above left For her new collection of wallpaper designs Flora is experimenting with different textured plants, including some dried grasses and seedheads sent to her by flower grower and designer Milli Proust, alongside cottage garden flowers and these delicately tinted straw flowers Xerochrysum bracteatum ‘Salmon Rose’. Above Work in progress on a new wallpaper design that offers the freshness of a summer garden. Left Samples of Flora’s current collection of wallpapers.

Above The pretty pink daisy-like flowers, Rhodanthe chlorocephala subsp. rosea, are new subjects for Flora’s artworks. Top right Flora unrolls different colourways of her Camellia wallpaper, which depicts buds in flower on twisting tree branches. It’s a peaceful design that conjures up the romance of her favourite English gardens. Right To create different textures, Flora paints in both acrylics and watercolours.

Left Flora tries a new design of a globe artichoke leaf against her Midnight Blue wallpaper. Colour and atmosphere are key to Flora’s work. The backgrounds are as important as the plants in focus and the colours she uses change according to whether she is in the city or the country – from bright shades of Jamaican-influenced houses in Notting Hill, to the natural tones of wildflowers and woodland. Top All of Flora’s designs come from her careful observation of plants, such as these dried hydrangea flowers. Above Flora mixes acrylics in her studio.