How vintage botanical illustrations and maximalist aesthetics fuel a contemporary artist's surrealist vision
In short: Artist Minna Gilligan transforms forgotten images from 1960s and 1970s gardening books into psychedelic collages. By blending hand-painted backgrounds with cut-outs of human-made plant cultivars, she creates surreal, maximalist works that bridge the gap between retro print culture and the digital editing sensibilities of the modern internet era.
Minna Gilligan’s artistic journey is deeply rooted in her upbringing, shaped by a mother who worked as a florist and a father who was a garden designer. This early exposure to the world of plants fostered her creative expression and helped her view art as a sustainable career path. Today, she maintains a dual practice, balancing fine art with commercial illustration for fashion and magazine brands, often utilizing a technique that combines found object collage with freeform painting and drawing.
Her primary source material comes from scouring op shops across Australia for vintage books focused on flower arranging, gardening, cake decorating, and fashion. She is particularly drawn to the 1960s and 1970s, a period when mainstream colour printing was a novelty that designers applied to everything from curtains to home interiors. Gilligan embraces this era’s maximalist philosophy, noting that the unapologetic use of vibrant, clashing colours—such as brown paired with orange—defines her aesthetic. She deliberately avoids rigid planning, preferring to move images around by hand until she discovers patterns and positions by accident.
The subject matter of her work frequently features human-made cultivars of familiar cottage plants, including pansies, lilies, and orchids. These selections are intentional; she views these confected, annual colour creations as symbols that mirror the presence of women during that era. By recontextualizing these forgotten botanical images, Gilligan breathes new life into them, resulting in works that feel like scenes from a lucid fever dream. Her process is entirely manual, emphasizing the visible touch of the artist, yet the final compositions remain firmly anchored in contemporary digital editing culture, appearing both novel and strangely familiar to the viewer.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: How Minna Gilligan's artistic practice is inspired by plants | My Garden Path | Gardening Australia
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