Imagined Flower Challenge

how it went, what I made and the artists who inspired me

In my twenties, I had passion but no structure. I’d pick up a brush, put it down. Pick up a pencil, decide I was terrible. Watch Netflix instead. Repeat until I was dizzy with my own inconsistency.

This didn’t trouble me. I believed wanting to do something was enough. The way a child believes pretending to swim makes them a swimmer. The way I believed that thinking about painting meant I was painting, somewhere, in some version of the day.

Then came Peachtober. You see, when you’re starting out, you don’t always know what to make. That not-knowing can become a reason to not-do. And if you don’t do, you don’t grow.

After Peachtober, I got greedy for consistency. I started looking for other challenges. Some lasted a week. Others, a whole month. I joined them all. Eventually, I wanted to host my own. That was the beginning of the Imagined Flower Challenge.

It was a good idea. Which meant, of course, my brain tried to ruin it by adding complexity. One imagined flower a day? Too simple. So I built a structure around it: Imagined Flower Encyclopedia.

When the challenge launched, I was terrified. I had errands to run and that helped. I stayed off Instagram all day.

When I finally checked, something strange and beautiful was happening. People were posting. Connecting. Commenting. Encouraging each other. They brought their own visual language, their own interpretations of what an imagined flower could be. It was mesmerizing.

Here are a few of my favorite artists and the flowers they made:

1, 2, 3, 4

1, 2, 3, 4

1, 2, 3, 4

1, 2, 3, 4