Little Pollinators: Fine Art Major Project & Portfolio

FINE ART — MAJOR PROJECT 2025/26

Little Pollinators / Little Creators

Flowers, Bees & the Language of Becoming

Graduate Showcase 2026 — Portfolio & Progress File

Ruskin Gallery — Interim Show

CONTENTS

01

Project Concept & Why Flowers?

02

Why Bees? The Central Motif

03

Artist References & Influences

04

Materials & Experimentation

05

Sketchbook Development

06

Stitching & Vulnerable Materials

07

Painting Progress

08

Graduate Showcase 2026 Plan

09

Exhibition Installation

10

Reflections & Moving Forward

Fine Art Major Project — Progress File

01 — PROJECT CONCEPT

Why Flowers?

My grandfather's farm in Poland was where flowers first became meaningful to me. When I moved to England, I carried that memory with me — the flowers he grew became a symbol of home, nature, and everything I left behind.

Drawing flowers is my way of going toward something simple but also meaningful. I wanted to create something that felt both personal and universal — using my own photography and sketches to create my drawings.

Everything began in black and white — a deliberate choice to strip back colour and focus on form, line, and emotion.

02 — THE CENTRAL MOTIF

Why Bees?

Bees are a life in happiness. I draw bees through a child's eyes — because children are happy, and that joy feels honest.

Bees and flowers make a perfect combination — meeting a flower with a bee is a symbol of new life. The bee is a symbol of worker and life.

My bees are whimsical, surrealist — oversized, round, exaggerated. Not quite cute, not quite real. This is intentional: I hate realism and I have always struggled drawing something 'real'. My cartoon-like bees feel more true.

Worker bees live only 5–6 weeks in summer due to intense activity — there is something deeply moving about that dedication.

The reason the bee looks like a cartoon? Honestly, I hate realism.

03 — ARTIST REFERENCES & INFLUENCES

Inspirations & Context

Blobbie Burgers

Bold, expressive figurative work that pushed me to embrace imperfection and let go of neat, controlled lines.

Laura Woodson

Floral abstraction with emotional depth — delicate colour layering that inspired my approach to painting petals as nearly transparent.

Joan Fullerton

Floral abstract art with loose gestural brushwork. Affirmed my direction toward abstract botanical painting rather than botanical illustration.

Fringe Gallery & Floral-Inspired Abstract Art — visiting and researching gallery spaces helped me understand how abstract floral work can carry personal narrative in a professional exhibition context.

04 — MATERIALS & EXPERIMENTATION

Vulnerable Materials

The materials I am working with are canvas and delicate fabric — almost see-through but not weightless. I chose this deliberately: I don't want to limit my progress by giving myself a material I cannot work with.

Fabric that is almost transparent carries a kind of vulnerability. You can see the stitches from the back. This connects to the deeper meaning behind the project.

Key experiments tried:

Painting on stretched linen/fabric

Sticking thread into wet paint while drying

Sand and gesso for unique texture

Delicate thread creating body and petals

Exploring if rough texture would interfere with delicacy

How to add material texture into my paintings without over-powering it?

Bouquet study — thin body, big head

Single flower — exploring weight and volume

Loop drawing — 'No perfect lines'

05 — SKETCHBOOK DEVELOPMENT

Flower Studies

The sketches began as studies from my grandfather's farm in Poland, evolving into something more personal. I explored elongating the flowers — making them longer than the canvas to show the proper way of the unique flowers' thin body and big head. I thought it would be interesting to try a different canvas size by making it longer.

06 — STITCHING & VULNERABILITY

The Stitching Progress

Each single painting is a series on the project. When displayed all together it becomes a bouquet itself.

I allow the viewer to give their own thought and meaning behind the project — they can read about my work or the layered idea, why I did this project.

What if I use needles into my work? It would feel like I was stabbing myself or wounding myself — because of the meaning the project has behind it and towards me.

Making stitching canvas painting — creating art by only using needle and thread. The delicate thread creates the body and petals.

Vulnerable, delicate — thin fabric almost see-through. As it is, on a vulnerable meaning behind it.

07 — PAINTING PROGRESS

From Sketch to Canvas

Moving from paper sketches to canvas, I had to adapt my delicate line quality to a larger, more physical medium. The challenge was maintaining the lightness of pencil while working with paint on fabric.

Flower Study

— canvas, black paint. Loose gestural line, no perfect lines. The imperfect loop defines the form.

Abstract Expansion

— linen canvas. Exploring the petal form abstractly; the dark arc suggesting the interior world of the flower.

08 — GRADUATE SHOWCASE 2026

Planning the Show

The Graduate Showcase proposal is to give information and samples of the showcase — photography, drawing, models — showing power ideas, working progress as evidence.

Canvas direction: Making the flowers longer than the canvas, to show the proper way of the unique flowers' thin body and big head. Using long canvases to display them in a series.

Display ideas explored:

Long vertical canvases for elongated flowers

Sculpture-inspired hinge to shape the flowers

Insect collection display (pinned fabric pieces like butterfly specimens)

Glass-fabric-spring-frame layered display box

Knot of string painting: inspired by 'Plastic Tears' (earlier piece)

Exhibition Installation / Interim Show (Ruskin Gallery)

Private View 4:30

09 — EXHIBITION INSTALLATION

Interim Show — Ruskin Gallery

The fabric flower pieces installed together form a bouquet — each individual piece a single bloom, together creating the full picture.

10 — Reflections & Moving Forward

Progress & Expressions

This project involves expressing myself through the hardship I did in this university and the struggle. I wanted to show my hardship with the project but also showing how much I struggled to study in Art University as a student.

I think creating this semester would be more meaningful because of the amount of time I could spend on it and perfect it, and to do proper fine art images that I want to express in this work.

The most important thing I want to capture in my project is the delicate source of the flower buds, almost to be delicate to touch, and carrying the heavy weight of the flower head point.

I feel like I am not at the level where I want to be just yet, but I am figuring it out very slowly with each experiment. I still have a long way to go as an artist. But slowly I am moving forward with my project and series.

Slowly I am moving forward.

FINE ART — MAJOR PROJECT 2025/26

Thank You

Little Pollinators / Little Creators

A project about flowers, bees, memory, vulnerability, and the slow process of becoming an artist.

Graduate Showcase — Ruskin Gallery 2026

Progress File — equivalent to 18,000 words