“This series was created from photographs and polaroids, along with painterly sketches from the Montreal Botanical Gardens during the winter of 2022, two years into a global pandemic and after an extended period of lockdown and what seemed like an extra long Canadian winter. Neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote of the healing powers of gardens and considered gardens and music to be two types of non-pharmaceutical therapies for mental well being. I painted over my original photographs using quasi-abstracted floral sketches from my notebooks. Nonsensical pistils and stamens, seeds, etc. overlap the manicured/man made scenes from the greenhouse, creating their own ecosystems. The subject matter of flowers are emblematic of life, love, and fragility.” With a 30-year multidisciplinary practice, Ottawa based Heidi Conrod has exhibited widely across Canada and the United States. Her work is included in both private and public collections.
