The snapdragon painting
Newsletter Issue #68
In a glance:
Life update: I got married!
Story time on the work in progress I shared with you last time (17/18 April 2026)
Reminders: Commissions are open - to enquire simply reply to this email & if you’re not already, please follow my instagram 🫶🏼
Okay so full disclosure, since the last update I haven’t actually made any more painting progress on the little piece I shared with you because I’ve been busy getting married! (!!!). And if you don’t know, planning such an event is no easy feat. But, it’s now been just over a full month since the big day, and the time has come to dive back into the creative process and all it encompasses.
So, for the sake of continuity we’re picking up exactly where we left of with the story behind the little work in progress I shared last time:
This painting - let’s call it ‘the snapdragon painting’ for now because it’s currently untitled - is an idea I’ve had in my brain for a while. (In fact, my first sketch for it dates back to the 4th of March 2025!).
The idea for it was born while leafing through Vickery’s Folk Flora (an absolute unit of a reference book) and coming across an entry on “Antirrhinum Majus”, commonly: the snapdragon. While reading, I learned that in certain areas of the UK these flowers are colloquially referred to as “dog-mouth”/“dogs-d’-bark”/“dog’s nose”/“dog’s snout”, which felt oddly familiar…
Distant childhood memories of flowers I grew up calling “skilakia / σκυλάκια” (little dogs) in Greece started to surface. Surely they can’t be the same plant?
Turns out they are! Which I found to be such a fun and exciting folkloric connection between my two homes: Greece & England.
On continuing my reading, I learnt that the same flower actually has a huge variety of names across the whole of the UK. Most of which seem to associate the flower with different snout-possessing animals: dogs, dragons, lions, monkeys, rabbits, tigers, frogs.
I'm already loving these connections and then I learn about the origins of the flower's name.
As it turns out, the first recorded use of the word ‘snapdragon’ in English was in 1573, and was likely inspired by how if you squeeze the sides of the flower it causes the ‘dragon’s mouth’ (petals) to snap open and shut.
Which... if you think about it looks similar to a barking motion.
A thought train that takes me to a childhood memory of doing just that: squeezing flowers and pretending they were little barking dogs.
And all of a sudden this small act of play has connected a kid in Athens in the late 1990s to people in England in the 1570s.
With this strong association of play, my mind’s eye started seeing cute little animals frolicking on snapdragon petals… an idea for a painting started to form, that has begun to materialise in this work in progress.
It still has a long way to go until it reaches the vision I have for it.
Since the original sketch to now, the idea has evolved, with an important driving question being: how do I compose this idea while staying true to the visual language I’ve been building and the feeling I want to portray?
Well, you can see the direction it’s going in…kind of. There’s still work to do, but I’m excited about this one and I hope some of that energy translates through my writing to you today.
Do you have any childhood memories tied to plants?
Off to work on this painting and more,
Arietta xx