Frida Kahlo and Flower Headdress

 Art. I find it is all about patience, mostly with ourselves.

It is also about finding that connection and getting out of the way so it can happen.

Patience to find the Connection

I have struggled with Frida's Flower Headdress. It happened only when I was able to back off and let it rest that the "solution" or I should say, the right thing came to me. It was there ALL the time but I kept pushing things into a different direction.

Frida- who was she? 

She let the brush become an extension of her heart, her pain as the flower bloomed in vibrant colors onto the canvas releasing that familiar ache within her back.

Paper and Silk with dyes...Paper with dyes...Silk painted with gold leaf... 

Read here about this Process!

Watch here the Process

And then when I wasn't thinking about it, it came to me right in the middle of doing a presentation for other artists that I realized that is was there all along! 

Hydrangea Story Hat

Create with your Heart

Of course- create your own with the silk that you love...love is always the key.

Hand drawn flowers. Dyed in layers and 

then topstitching with free form motion.

This the color and depth that she was asking for all along!

Finished Flowers.

Breath.

And now...now...I was able to glide along smoothly, just as Dorothy was told by Glinda..

I still loved the idea of a halo...so created a round shaped under structure to add the flowers to.

One by one...being mindful of color balance in cool and warm tones with a bit of neutral color tucked in.

Note: I also added a bit of free form topstitching to her rebozo to honor the spiritual  weaving of the Tehuana culture that Frida so adored.

The Final Images!

I paint flowers...

Close up views.

On a closing note...as I reflect on this process of creating Frida, I find the trials that I went through to express her in her fullest glory was in a sense, how she lived her life. There were ups and downs but in the end she got her one woman show. She expressed her pain with in her paintings and surrounded herself with beauty in relief of her battered body. 

Her life was about being truly herself 

with no apologies.

For information of this one of kind original
contact 
Leslie O'Leary