YouTube channel Peter Draws catalogues Peter Deligdisch’s exquisite artwork, and his latest post is a beautiful-looking thing using flower petals.
Using a few handfuls of “budget bunches of flowers” which the US artist thinks amounted to less than $10, Peter created a mandala, a spiritual symbol in Hinduism and Buddhism used to represent the universe.
The Press Association caught up with Peter after he posted his piece to ask him a few questions.
How did you decide on a pattern?
“I rarely plan ahead too much. I like to just start the piece and feel it out as I go. Often planning it out too much results in me feeling like my art is too rigid and forced.
“The cool thing about placing these petals is that they kind of form the patterns on their own, you just have to carefully put a bunch of them down in a row.
“It’s hard to make it look bad, you just have to be patient and choose your color progressions and how you want the different rows of petal shapes to fit together.”
Where did you get the flowers?
“I initially approached a local florist to see if they wanted to work together on this with a local artist, to see if I could perhaps re-purpose some of their scraps that they throw away by the bucket-load while making flower arrangements.
“I was quickly ushered out the door however, with assurances the owner wasn’t interested in such things, that they only let the best of their work go be shown.
“So I went to the grocery store and bought a few handfuls of the budget bunches of flowers they have in a little floral section there. I used less than half the flowers I bought, what you see in the video is probably less than $10 worth of flowers ripped apart and rearranged.”
What could you compare petals to as a medium?
“It’s probably most comparable to doing the first stages of a mosaic, the part where you arrange everything before you glue it all down. At least I think that’s how some people do mosaics.”
What else would you like to make art with?
“I can probably do this sort of art with almost anything you can buy a lot of various shades of. Coins. Crayons. Lunch meat.”
You can see more from Peter and his artwork by looking at his YouTube channel or his website.
