Developing Beauty

Brandy Kraft’s interest in nature inspired her to create her own hybrid species of flowers

Mankind is destroying the planet. This destruction has made me fascinated with preserving nature. I started with painting flowers—thousands of flowers in all states of life and decay. For years now, I have wanted to preserve their beauty and prevent their extinction.

Then suddenly in my dreams and in my subconscious I started having visions of new, non-existent flowers. I started painting these strange new hybrids and realized I was creating not only new species of flora but I was building a new world of my own. Flower by flower.

After a bit of persuasion, I convinced my husband to leave life in New York City to move back to Sweden so I could follow in the footsteps of famous Swedish botanist Carl von Linné. Each new hybrid flower species I create is now documented and cataloged in a scientific manner as I continually draw inspiration from the famous “father of taxonomy.”

I am building a new, magical hybrid world and this is just the beginning.

When I begin a new hybrid, the flower takes shape in my imagination. I conjure up as many possibilities as I can and then go out on a hunt for petals to fulfill my vision. After pillaging the local flower markets I come back to the studio and rip the flowers apart. I then spread them all over the studio floor. This stage is vital to my visualization process and it helps me to see all possibilities at once. I spend quite a bit of time in this stage as I explore the realms of composition, texture and color in order to bring my new species to life.