A home can be anywhere but if I can see our beautiful native flora, my heart knows it is truly HOME. This bunch of natives combine leucodendron and wattle with a banksia and grevillea, painted with acrylics and then hand beaded with glass to sparkle and glint in the light. The beads are used to highlight the fragility of these blooms as well as the strength in surviving rugged growing conditions.

Athenie Leckey is a Melbourne based emerging artist who revels in the beauty of our native flora. Acrylics, paper cut with collage, and ink are the current mediums of choice, to depict a single bloom or a large messy bunch nearly spilling out of their container. I create these floral works to be surrounded by native blooms. I want them in my garden, my street, my vases, my paintings, my work. I admire the strength of the larger blooms, the wooded stems, the tough leaves, the robust flower head but closer inspection shows the soft downy edge of a petal, or a delicately curled style of a grevillea, or the golden stamens of each wattle globe. The hidden softer aspect of the flora – and life – is what makes an experience memorable and special in our hearts and minds.