Lydia Beanland

Bloei in het Donker| Blossom in the Dark

Summer Window Exhibition at Bloomsbury Design. 61b Judd St. London WC1H 9QT

25th April - 5th June 2023

This is Lydia’s return exhibition to Bloomsbury Design. Paint| Print | Objects was showcased in Autumn 2021. 

On display here at Bloomsbury Design are a collection of hand made and painted paper flowers by artist and designer Lydia Beanland. Lydia works as a freelance print and textile designer and artist for fashion and interiors and works from her studio in Amsterdam. She is a Brother of The Art Workers' Guild, London.

During the last year I have taught myself how to make paper flowers. I started making these after making a bouquet of crepe paper flowers for children from Ukraine. In the Spring of 2022 I volunteered in Amsterdam Central Station, greeting and helping refugees arriving into Amsterdam railway station, who had fled from the Russian invasion. Often I brought drawing materials with me, so the children had something to do whilst they were having to wait for many hours with their mothers. The drawings that the children made had a profound impact on me, so I then began to create art and craft workshops for the children and their families within their hostels across the city. When I took the bouquet of flowers that I had made to take to the hostel one day to give out to the children, a lady there asked me if I could show them how to make them too. 

In many of these early classes we looked at Ukrainian wild flowers and I shared and showed my love for Dutch flower paintings of Vincent Van Gogh and c17th floral still life's from the collections of the Rijksmuseum and the MauritsHuis, by Jan Davidsz. de Heem, Rachel Ruysch and Ambrosius Bosschaert. The room at the hostel where I gave the classes, was always very dark and so I brought lamps and a fresh white table cloth with me to light our hands as we worked. The flowers on display here, that I went on to make and develop seemed to me to blossom out of darkness, representing both the fragility and the strength of the human spirit  

x LB 2023

Bloomsbury Design is at Hugh Cullum Architects. Located 300 meters from St Pancras International Station and 5 min walk from Russell Square Station. The window exhibition may be seen day and night and is open during normal office hours for a closer look.

To request further info for this exhibition and for all other enquiries, please contact Lydia via her Contact page below.