A Blossoming Partnership

The latest collection from Kettlewell Colours features textiles designed by Vanessa Bowman, a Dorset artist who draws inspiration from her garden

- Claire Bowman

Standing at the easel in her studio, a wooden pavilion at the end of her West Dorset garden, Vanessa Bowman puts the finishing touches to her latest work of art. Renowned for her detailed still-life paintings which observe the simple beauty of nature and everyday objects – a vase of garden flowers, a hen’s feather, a delicate spray of cow parsley or a bowl of plums – the award-winning artist has been much in demand of late. But this new body of work is among a number of exciting commercial commissions that have come her way in the past year.

As well as exhibiting at six galleries, Vanessa has painted a series of garden illustrations for House & Garden magazine, teamed up with Farrow & Ball on a project to launch their ‘Colour by Nature’ collection; and produced seasonal scenes of pheasants and hares for Highgrove’s Christmas card collection.

Her latest exclusive collaboration is with the locally-based fashion brand Kettlewell Colours, which invited her to create a series of vibrant seasonal textile designs for Spring/Summer 2020. The result is a vibrant range of florals and scatter print dresses and tops - each textile design capturing what Art of England Magazine describes as Vanessa’s ‘wonderful eye for colour’.

‘Vanessa understands colour and instinctively knows which shades blend well together'