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Vera Flos (wildflowers)
Botanical Sculptures by Loralin Toney
Inspired by my adoration of the natural world, its simplicity and splendor, I have made a series of wildflower sculptures. Each flower in nature has cohabitants and minute workers in and around them. Insects, fungi, plants, soil and rocks make up the busy productivity that produces the showy bloom.
I am fascinated with the 15th century Dutch master works, their golden age magnificence, and botanical fanaticism. It was a time of discover from culture to culture, continent to continent. Flower and forest studies were extremely popular as a result.
My Flower's detailed bases are simple forest floor snapshots from my imagination. A mere reference to Otto Marseus and Rachel Ruschs' 'Sottoboscos'- Forest floor still lifes that became popular during the Dutch golden era.
Sculpted in porcelain and copper each work harkens back to the kind of craftsmanship of times gone past. I aspire to recreate a tiny fragment of beautiful and terrible world that we live in. Actuated in the actions and cycles of the little microclimates of nature that are all around us.