The Poet’s Herbarium
A watercolor and cut paper collection, inspired by the flowers - and the poems - of Emily Dickinson
Pressed flowers are little acts of devotion - a decision, made in a single moment - that this beauty deserves to last.
Emily Dickinson felt that too. She spent years pressing and labeling hundreds of flowers by hand - quietly, carefully, the way she did everything. She saw what I see: that a bloom holds as much meaning as a poem.
The Poet's Herbarium is my homage to her. Ten original watercolor and cut paper collages, each one rooted in a flower she loved and wrote about.
Pale purples, butter yellows, blush and deep plum - all layered against warm, tea-stained grounds that feel like old paper and older poems. Every petal cut by hand. Every piece one of a kind, framed and ready to hang.
Made to last. Just like she intended.
Collect an Original Painting
Layer by Tiny Layer
Every piece starts with watercolor and ends with a lot of tiny scissors. In between - pressing, cutting, layering, and a fair amount of holding-my-breath while placing a single petal exactly where it needs to go. Worth it every time. ✨
All It Takes Is a Clover and a Bee
Three paintings rooted in the same quiet truth - that the simplest things are secretly the most alive.
This one has the bee. ☺️
Two bold magenta-plum clover blooms, every single petal hand-cut and layered in collage, green leaves scattered across white - and one small, important bee, her wings rendered in delicate vellum so they catch the light just so.
In the poem, Dickinson observes that the bee doesn't concern herself with the clover's lineage. Clover is clover. It is aristocracy simply by being what it is. I love that. There's something quietly reassuring about a poet noticing that beauty doesn't need a pedigree.
A small piece with a big, gentle kind of confidence.
Size: 5 × 7 inches (image) | Framed: 9 × 9 inches
Medium: Original watercolor and cut paper collage
Frame: Warm Wood 9 × 9 shadow box - ready to hang
One of a kind: Yes - this is an original, one-of-a-kind work
There is a light that only exists in spring. You know it when you see it. It doesn't last.
This is the most abundant piece in the collection - a full garden, all at once. Clover, lilac, daisy, buttercup, and foxglove together on a warm sepia ground, each flower rendered in soft watercolor and then given dimension with cut paper petals and leaves. Pale purples, gentle yellows, white, and deep magenta - a whole season caught in a single breath.
Dickinson wrote that this particular spring light is something science cannot overtake, but human nature feels. That's exactly what this piece is reaching for - not a record of flowers, but the feeling of them. All together, all at once.
Made for a wall that needs a little light.
Size: 11 x 14 inches (image) | Framed: 11 x 14 inches
Medium: Original watercolor and cut paper collage
Frame: White 11 x 14 shadow box - ready to hang
One of a kind: Yes - this is an original, one-of-a-kind work
Inspired by a poet, a garden, and her pressed herbarium.
Studies in Yellow.
Three paintings. One palette. A color Dickinson said nature saves for sunsets - and for this.
Spring arrives with an offer you can't refuse.
This is one of the larger pieces in the collection - and one of the most joyful. Two daffodils in warm butter yellow rise against a sepia-toned background that glows like warming soil, like the first real day you can feel the season shifting. The collage layers in the long, elegant leaves and, floating softly overhead, a delicate cabbage butterfly mid-passage.
The poem it's named for is pure Dickinson - an offer to sell a flower, immediately undermined by her own admission that she could never quite bring herself to do it. This piece understands that completely. Some things just want to be given, not sold.
A piece for anyone who counts down to the first daffodil of the year. You know who you are.
Size: 11 × 14 inches (image) | Framed: 11 x 14 inches
Medium: Original watercolor and cut paper collage
Frame: White 11 x 14 shadow box - ready to hang
One of a kind: Yes - this is an original, one-of-a-kind work
"Nobody knows this little Rose" by Emily Dickinson
Nobody knows this little Rose—
It might a pilgrim be
Did I not take it from the ways
And lift it up to thee.
Only a Bee will miss it—
Only a Butterfly,
Hastening from far journey—
On its breast to lie—
Only a Bird will wonder—
Only a Breeze will sigh—
Ah Little Rose—how easy
For such as thee to die!
Just Before.
Two lilacs. Two poems. One feeling - the ache of beauty that hasn't quite arrived yet.
Some things are worth waiting for. Lilacs are one of them.
This piece captures that particular ache of late spring - the moment just before summer arrives, when the lilacs are still heavy on the branch and everything feels full of quiet promise. Pale purple blooms rendered in soft watercolor, with pressed lilac petals and leaves layered in as collage - some blooms tucked close to the stem, others drifting gently outward.
Emily Dickinson knew this feeling well. She tended her garden at the Homestead with deep care, and lilacs were among her most beloved flowers - in the garden and on the page. A warm sepia cameo oval grounds the composition, giving the whole piece the feeling of something treasured and kept. Like a pressed flower slipped between the pages of a favorite book.
It's a piece that feels like anticipation. And somehow, like arrival too.
Size: 9 × 12 inches (image) | Framed: 11 x 14 inches
Medium: Original watercolor and cut paper collage
Frame: Warm Wood 11 x 14 shadow box - ready to hang
One of a kind: Yes - this is an original, one-of-a-kind work
“A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the Year,
At any other period -
When March is scarcely here”
―Emily Dickinson
Some things are easier to say through flowers.
Two soft wild roses and a daisy - watercolor washes in pale pink, yellow, and white, with rose petals, stamens, daisy petals, and leaves all carefully cut and layered in collage. A warm sepia cameo oval frames the composition, lending the whole piece a feeling of something preserved, something quietly personal.
Dickinson wrote of hiding within a flower - using it as both shelter and messenger, fading from a vase and leaving behind something that feels almost like loneliness, but is actually love. She understood flowers as language. This piece does too.
For the person who feels things deeply and expresses them softly. For a wall in a room that needs a little of that kind of quiet.
Size: 9 × 12 inches (image) | Framed: 11 × 14 inches
Medium: Original watercolor and cut paper collage
Frame: Warm wood 11 × 14 shadow box - ready to hang
One of a kind: Yes - this is an original, one-of-a-kind work