3) In The Garden Of Becoming

About My Journey Through Gardens Full of Flowers

As an artist still living in the shadow of cancer, I have recently been reflecting on my evolving body of work, In The Garden Of Becoming — This body is made up of seven collections spanning 2023 and going forward to 2027, that explore growth, memory, and transformation through bloom, cloth, and nature. The collections trace my creative lineage to a sculptor grandfather, a dressmaker mother, an engineer father, and an uncle whose London garden first sparked my love of flowers at about the age of eleven or twelve.

Having survived both a childhood civil war and a terminal diagnosis as an adult, my art is now encompassing large-scale ‘Petals Unbound’ watercolours that will be exhibited in West Sussex at the end of this month as well as the ongoing series ‘Of Petal and Wing’ {still in progress} — as a bold act of resilience and reclamation. In progress also are works that combine ‘Cloth, Bloom, Memory ‘as well as an interpretation of flower painting from the ‘Vanitas’ era. All of these works are meant as a lasting visual inheritance for my daughters and grand daughters.

Lithographic Prints of my Uncle Ray’s back garden (by my uncle ~ unsigned) at 13, Ashbridge Road, Leytonstone, London (undated - circa 1980)

Current & Future Collections — Early and Research Stages

Petals Unbound ~ From stillness to something ungoverned.

Cloth, Bloom, Memory ~ A cathartic collection shaped by pattern and inheritance, where fabric and bloom carry what endures in memory.

The Persistence of Bloom ~'Vanitas' , an argument of hope against doom.

2) My World of Art and Gardening

SPRING and EARLY SUMMER 2026 UPDATE ~ I'm always amazed at how quickly time passes. It feels like no time at all since I launched this updated website, evolved from my original site, nartomioriginalart.com. Building it kept me busy throughout spring and into early summer, alongside plenty of other art-related projects — all of which I've loved being part of.

Alongside finding time to immerse myself in my own painting, I've been teaching my own watercolour flower painting class locally, 'Blooms Begin in Water'. I've also been preparing for and entering local exhibitions and art trails, including the Lindfield Art Trail a few weeks ago and the Attic Arts Exhibition in Ditchling this May.

My table at the Lindfield Art Trail in May this year.

When I first moved into my current home, the garden had virtually no flowers or shrubs to speak of. Over the past six years, I've slowly built up the green backdrop it has today. It made it through last winter well, but despite planting bulbs and numerous shrubs last autumn ~ all chosen to feed my colour palette for painting ~ this spring brought surprisingly little colour. A handful of Farmer Gracy tulips did emerge, their colours utterly delicious (pictured below), but of the many I planted, only a scattered few actually flowered.

Images of flowering tulips in my garden.

What I did get, unexpectedly, was a glorious show of fragrant white roses, spilling across the shed roof and side at the bottom of the garden and along the right-hand fence. The leggy shoots from these well-established roses I bent and trained into curves, and they rewarded me with an abundance of glowing, heavily-petalled white blooms. Adding to the display, a David Austin rose called Koko Loco has settled in beautifully at the end of one of the right-hand beds, its dusky pink flowers a real treat. Nearby, a large wisteria in a huge pot by the back door and a fabulous white jasmine and clematis on the left-hand side rounded out the display.

One disappointment this year: of the three peonies I planted two years ago, not a single one flowered even though they were beautiful last year.

Looking ahead to next spring, I've added a deep peach and a white camellia, along with a lilac and an early-flowering purple clematis, to the left-hand bed in hopes of bringing more colour. More seasoned gardeners have reassured me that the tulips and shrubs that didn't emerge this year may simply be doubling underground, ready to reappear next year. Fingers crossed!

1) My World of Art and Gardening

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN ~ My art and gardening journey began in 2023, when a devastating health diagnosis changed my life abruptly, dramatically, and overnight. But out of that tectonic shift came something unexpected: a quieter, slower, and quite literally more grounded way of living and creating.

As an experienced designer, my working life had once meant travelling across the UK and the Mediterranean, immersed in every stage of a project — from the first spark of an idea, through design and construction, to handing the finished space over to clients in the worlds of restaurant, bar, and cruise ship design. Now, my journey looked altogether different: finding my way back from mental darkness — shadowed by the very real possibility that my diagnosis could be terminal — towards a kind of mental blooming, simply by sitting at a table and painting flowers in watercolour, all day, every day.

I knew my recovery would be a long road, so I made a decision: to turn my modest back garden into an outdoor flower-painting studio. It gave me an abundance of blooms and small wildlife to draw and paint, right at my back door.

This blog will be where I share how the garden is looking and flowering through the seasons, and showcase the floral mix I've planted — and will go on planting — in the years to come.