Art in bloom with Doctor Cooper Studio
Share
Image courtesy Doctor Cooper Studio
A floral artist of considerable acumen, Dr Lisa Cooper has a flair for arrangements that has seen her statement-making work grace Tiffany & Co, The Australian Ballet and the Sydney Theatre Company, as well as countless corporate and private clients’ workplaces and homes. Her installations are architectural, her posies are intimate, but more than that it’s an understanding of flowers, recently made public in her book The Flowers, which sets her apart.
{1} FRAGRANT GARDEN ROSES
They are so undulant, fragrant and grow in the most beautiful colours… the most inexperienced flower lover is able to cut them and arrange them en masse into a favourite vase.
{2} VIOLET
I have loved violets for a very long time – I have them tattooed on the skin that covers my heart. Of course it is their fragrance and vivid colour that drew me to them and the humility of their scale and life cycle. Though my real affection developed when I found that the Ancient Greeks would plant the tiny flower among their enormous life-giving olives to protect the olive from bad spirits… on my tattoo they also sit among the olives I have etched on my skin. In one’s home they will last only a few days, but their beauty will linger.
{3} LILAC
One stem of lilac may have as many as five flower heads and each bloom is made up of what seems like hundreds of the most perfectly formed florets that hold the most intoxicating fragrance known to man. One bunch seems to fragrance an entire house.
{4} STURT’S DESERT PEA
I absolutely love this Australian native flower for the uniqueness of its form and the depth of its brilliant red petals. It is rare to find it near to Sydney, but I have found a grower who has an incredible knack for tending it about an hour and a half outside of Sydney. I often use the cut flower in arrangements in contrast to paler European flowers such as fragrant white garden roses.
{5} LILY OF THE VALLEY
Possibly the most enchanted flower of them all… one stem of the tiny specimen appears to me as intoxicating as a wild enormous mass of any other flower. One stem holds up to 15 or so of the most perfectly formed white bell shaped blooms and it has a fragrance that is powerful in comparison to its scale. A tiny pot of them in one’s bedroom makes all of the difference to the spirit of that bedroom’s inhabitant.
I absolutely love this Australian native flower for the uniqueness of its form and the depth of its brilliant red petals. It is rare to find it near to Sydney, but I have found a grower who has an incredible knack for tending it about an hour and a half outside of Sydney. I often use the cut flower in arrangements in contrast to paler European flowers such as fragrant white garden roses.
© Niche Media 2024