When I was little girl, one of the biggest influences in my life was my big sister.

When we were growing up I shared a bedroom with my sister and she used to spend hours looking through books, especially books on butterflies. I used to watch her draw them, and would listen in awe as she told me everything about their delicate life cycles. She had real ones in entomology cases on her wall, and would show me butterfly chrysalises on the bottoms of the window ledges. She would tell me their wonderful names…peacocks, red admirals, cabbage whites, painted ladies… She really was quite obsessed.

These last few weeks I’ve been reminiscing about these childhood obsessions while drawing and painting kaleidoscopes of butterflies myself, only, on the reverse on glass.

As my process means working in reverse, the composition of each butterfly was worked out in advance, so that the small white highlight dots were painted first, then the individual lines of each butterfly were inked before applying the reds and gilding in copper leaf.

‘Copper Monarchs’ is my most recently completed piece, and is now listed in my SHOP