“The wind is my nemesis!” says Jennifer Latour, and rightly so. In her sculptural assemblages, single flowers or small clusters of blooms sprout from tree branches or thick stems, appearing like otherworldly forms standing in the landscape. A soft breeze could topple the Vancouver-based artist’s ephemeral works, scattering their delicate petals and spindly shoots before she has the chance to snap a photo.

These fleeting moments are preserved in Latour’s Bound Species series, which she began during lockdown by piecing together objects found around her home into unconventional, ikebana-style compositions. “During this time, I started having a recurring dream of giant flowers growing around me with multiple species of other flowers growing off one stem. I draw a lot of inspiration from my dreams, and this was something I had to test out in real life,” she tells us.

After a few trials, the process clicked. She ideated on the ways different colors and shapes might puzzle together into a sort of hybrid character and envisioned photographing on location, presenting the unorthodox arrangements in stunning, natural settings. When travel became possible, she jumped at the opportunity to bring the sculptures outdoors. That’s when she encountered the wind. “I quickly discovered how much more difficult this was,” she says. “It takes so much more patience and time to make my sculptures out in the wild but all that much more satisfying when it works out!”

Today, Latour continues to venture outdoors and often sources materials from local garden centers, flower shops, and even the occasional grocery store, should the botanicals be locally grown. She assembles each piece by hand, connecting stem to stem in a way that evokes “the interconnectedness found in nature, and serves as a reminder that all creatures are bound simultaneously by both their similarities and their differences.”

With trips planned to Arizona and the U.K. seaside in the coming months, the artist will continue to transform colorful specimens into strange, mishmashed forms. “I dream of taking the work all around the world to the most remote and unique locations,” she adds. “It’s a practice I see myself continuing to create and evolve until either my hands or my body stop working.”

Latour’s images are currently on view in two group exhibitions—Where the Seasons Endure at Gallery COA in Montreal and The House and the Forest at Can Balaguer in Palma, Mallorca—and she’s also planning for a solo show in 2027. Keep up with her travels and projects on Instagram.

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Stand in any forest and look up, and it’s hard not to be mesmerized by the swaying of tall trees and their elegant canopies casting shade onto the woodland floor. But imagine being an ant or beetle and peering up at the stems of wild geraniums, garlic, or buttercups and experiencing the same sensation. For photographer Theo Bosboom, this ground-level view of flowers and plants gave rise to a series that captures them in the way we might photograph a grove of towering, ancient sequoias.

Traversing local landscapes around his home in the Netherlands and sometimes venturing across the border into Germany or Belgium, Bosboom explores forests, dunes, public parks, roadside verges, and virtually any place that flowers grow. These excursions also sparked concern at the lack of pollinators he found among the flowers. “At times, it was eerily quiet,” he shares in the preface for his book, Flowerscapes, A Bug’s Eye View. “This matches recent studies showing that the numbers of flowers and insects have declined sharply across Western Europe over the past decades.”

There are a lot of reasons for the steep drop in insect populations, not just in Europe but around the world. Most of the reasons stem from human activities such as agriculture, pesticides, urban development and habitat destruction, pollution, and changing temperatures as a result of the escalating climate crisis.

Bosboom finds reasons to hope, however. He has observed how the Netherlands has adopted more environmentally friendly road management practices, and how people are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of native plants and wildflowers in supporting not only insect populations but entire ecosystems.

The diversity and resilience of flowers really struck a chord with Bosboom, who says, “The endlessly surprising perspectives completely captivated me, and I found myself constantly marvelling at their beauty, elegance, and strength.” He was also drawn to reducing his environmental impact by working more locally, sticking to destinations he could reach on foot or by bike or with just a short drive.

Purchase Flowerscapes, A Bug’s Eye View on Bosboom’s web shop, where you can also purchase prints, and explore much more of his work on Instagram.

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Bristol-based artist Diana Beltrán Herrera continues to construct elaborate sculptures of flora and fauna in vibrant paper. Over the last few years, Herrera’s work has grown in both scale and subject matter as she incorporates new materials such as paperboard, thread, and cardboard, which have allowed her work to evolve beyond previous forms.

The artist’s latest explorations of nature motifs include flower structures, leaf patterns, and most recently, coral formations. Uniquely, coral reefs exhibit fractal and hyperbolic geometry, making them a particularly fascinating subject for sculptural reproduction. Utilizing thread as a structural tool has been especially integral for Herrera’s explorations of different species, as she creates dozens of iterations with an array of colorful tentacles and skeletons.

“When working with embroidery, I am particularly interested in how paper can borrow techniques traditionally associated with textiles,” the artist shares with Colossal. “Thread becomes a way of drawing, connecting, and constructing forms.”

Aside from her personal practice, Herrera also continues to produce commissioned works for clients around the world. This month, the artist is sending her first family of coral research works to the Deutsches Museum in Munich, where they will be exhibited in an installation opening at the end of June. Find more from the artist on Instagram.

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Glossy, synthetic, and very compressed, Ant Hamlyn’s botanicals are unlike anything you’d find in nature. He taps into the aesthetic of Y2K and the early 2000s, when early computer graphics, sci-fi, and teen punk melded into a kind of optimistic, tech-forward visual experience. Think early flip phones, polyurethane miniskirts, and Now That’s What I Call Music on CD.

Better Go South, which presents the artist’s current solo exhibition Soft // Chrome, describes the artist’s approach as “celebrating our human capacity to find beauty and connection even within the most manufactured environments.”

Hamlyn’s playful, cartoonish works center around stuffed and squished polyurethane flowers, invoking a kind of “liquid metal” redux that nods to our past optimism about technology while acknowledging the anxieties that have evolved and continue to grow in the post-digital age.

See the works by appointment in Stuttgart, and check out more on the artist’s Instagram.

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Based in the foothills of Cambewarra Mountain in New South Wales, Australia, Tamara Dean captures ethereal images that explore the intrinsic bond between the human body and the natural world. She is driven by what she describes as a desire to “explore the reality that humans are not separate from nature, but intrinsically part of it.”

Using bodies to express this relationship, the figures within her compositions do not emerge as prominent subjects of portraiture. Instead, they exist as elements embedded within each scene, often emerging as extensions of surrounding flora. “I am interested in those moments when the body appears to merge with the landscape, becoming almost plant-like, animal-like or elemental, suggesting that we are participants in nature rather than observers of it,” she explains.

“Introversion” depicts crouching figures hiding inside frilly blue tutus that imitate their neighboring flowers, calling to an almost instinctive impulse to camouflage. In a vibrant pop of color, two hot pink-haired heads in “In Bloom” mimic nearby lotus flower buds, waiting to bloom alongside lotus plants.

Gesture is an integral part of Dean’s process. While directing the figures within her work, the photographer explains, “I often encourage them to respond intuitively to their surroundings. At times, this involves reflecting the structures, rhythms, or symmetries found in nearby flora and foliage through their physical placement, posture, or gesture.” These visible idiosyncrasies further the dynamic exchange between human and other life forms.

Lately, Dean has spent more time painting. “It’s something I have always done quietly in the background as part of my creative process,” she explains. “But only now that my children are 19 and 20 have I been able to dedicate myself to it more fully. I’m enjoying the challenge of working in a different medium and the change in perspective it brings.”

These paintings, alongside several photographs, will be included in a forthcoming solo exhibition early next year at Michael Reid in Sydney. Last week, she opened Leave only footprints at Manly Art Gallery and Museum, which is on view through August 2. Find Dean on Instagram to follow along with her ongoing interdisciplinary explorations.

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The Colombian artist Delcy Morelos describes her hometown of Tierralta as “a paradise full of butterflies and unpaved streets.” In the late 1960s and early ’70s, Morelos spent her days in her grandmother’s garden, running barefoot and gleaning what it meant to live in connection with the land. When paramilitary and guerrilla troops moved in, though, the region was plunged into a chaotic state of grief and fear.

In her earliest works, Morelos translated the death and destruction plaguing her home into two-dimensional compositions. As she details in a new segment for Art21, acrylic painting was not long her primary mode of working, and quickly, she returned to the earth, incorporating soil, straw, and grass into large-scale installations. The film follows the artist as she installs a sepulchral mound in Seville’s Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, a former Carthusian monastery turned art museum that once housed Christopher Columbus’ remains.

Throughout the film, we witness Morelos grab gobs of straw-laden soil and affix the chunky material to a standing structure, which eventually grows a range of produce native to both sides of the Atlantic. In contrast to the space’s colonial ties, the artist’s work presents a way of creating and living that’s entwined in natural rhythms. Visitors are greeted by notes of cinnamon, cloves, and fecund soil before being enveloped by towering walls of growth. Within the vaulted monastery, Morelos’ indomitable forms offer a direct tie to the sacred and divine right beneath our feet.

“Many people believe they are in a bubble, and that is why they can do things that harm nature, harm others, and also harm themselves,” she says, demonstrating a profound sense of care for and connection to all that gives life.

This segment is part of Art21’s Human Nature episode and is available to watch on its site. Find additional films on YouTube.

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“There was a moment when I was walking between forests and mountains in Tepoztlán, Mexico, while dandelions floated across my face,” Alexis Mata says. “In that instant, I experienced a strange sensation, as if I were standing on another planet, in another time, confronted with an entirely new landscape.”

As the dainty seeds drifted through the air, Mata began to think about the ways life forms travel and embed themselves in new ecosystems. He was drawn to the idea of landing, of rooting and growing, which quickly became the basis for a poetic exhibition at Thinkspace in Los Angeles.

Titled Lost Landing, the show features Mata’s glitched landscapes in which familiar terrain appears otherworldly. Plants, skies, and stones slide into a sort of visual glissando, overlapping and converging in abstracted forms. “Landing functions as a metaphor for discovery, but also for reconnecting with the creative impulse and with the capacity for wonder,” the artist adds.

Dandelions gone to seed appear in several works, alongside cacti of various sizes and shapes. Thriving succulents that can live for centuries are contrasted with the dying flowers, collapsing time in an already surreal and fantastical geographic plane.

The exhibition “ultimately proposes a space where forms seem to mutate, drift, and slowly colonize their surroundings,” the artist says. “Each piece functions as the trace of an unknown landscape, a fragment of an expanding world where ideas disperse, float, and find new ways to grow.”

Lost Landing is on view through June 27. Explore more of Mata’s works on Instagram.

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With bodies composed of ghostly ferns, flowers, and fungi, Molly Devlin’s fantastical and ethereal acrylic portraits invite us into a dreamy woodland realm. Her works tap into the beauty and resilience of living creatures, from a white bear cloaked in translucent butterflies to a diminutive mouse composed of different lifecycle phases of a dandelion. Part fauna and part flora, each elegant animal is a reminder of nature’s interconnectedness.

Devlin is currently working toward a solo exhibition opening in early August at Corey Helford Gallery in Los Angeles. She’s also finishing up a mural in collaboration with S.V. Williams along the American River in Sacramento. See more on Instagram.

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Six years in the making, Christina Mrozik’s new project tackles “the feelings of all things.” Fifty cards comprise the richly illustrated oracle deck, which delves into a vast emotional terrain through the artist’s distinctive visual metaphors of flora and fauna. Monochromatic in palette and surreal in subject matter, the individual works portray a variety of curious pairings from twin turtles with eyes nested into their shells to a bird speared by a spindly tree to a lily pad bursting from an open alligator jaw.

“Each drawing took between 20 to 40 hours of focused work,” Mrozik writes. “I built every image in layers—starting with rough sketches, researching forms, refining the composition, and slowly developing the final drawing in pencil until it felt complete.”

What results is an “emotional ecosystem designed to help you witness your feelings, understand their purpose, and build a relationship with your inner world. It is not a tool for fixing yourself, but a practice for meeting yourself,” they add.

As with much of Mrozik’s work, The Feelings of All Things melds beauty and pain, death and life. The deck is designed to be used on its own or alongside a preferred tarot set, either by selecting an illustration that feels most alluring or profound in the moment or simply choosing a card and reflecting on the imagery.

The Feelings of All Things has just under a week to go on Kickstarter, where it’s blown past its original goal, although there are still a few rewards available. Find more on Mrozik’s website and Instagram.

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“Color, for me, is a heightened reality,” says J Carino. Through palettes rooted in a dynamic dance between earth and jewel tones, the artist renders lush scenes in which nude figures commune with nature. A sturdy back buttresses a fallen tree, chests and limbs peek through a summer meadow, and a muscular grip cradles a small mule amid a raging flood. Blocks of color and gestural brushstrokes characterize each composition, which question what we deem natural and innate.

The intimacies of queer life figure prominently in Carino’s work, which layers bodies and organic motifs into dense expanses. He employs a variety of source materials that range from renderings of live models and videos of himself to nature studies and plein air drawings in pastels, the latter of which often inform his color palettes. “Typically, my work begins with observation of nature. It might be a fallen tree, a particular animal or plant that I then make drawings of,” he adds.

Researching the historical and cultural symbols associated with these organic forms follows, while allowing connections between objects and motifs to emerge spontaneously as he works. “I see patterns as a kind of personal language to symbolize larger concepts and themes that I can then weave together into different narratives,” the artist tells Colossal. “There is a collage-like aesthetic to my work that reflects these different pieces coming together.”

From biblical floods to determined donkeys to autumnal leaves, the elements that comprise Carino’s paintings touch on questions of desire, paradise, and queerness through human connection to the natural world. Even when disaster strikes, there’s an overwhelming sense of beauty and resilience, bolstered by both physical strength and deep bonds with one another.

Carino recently relocated to London, and he will start a master’s program at the Royal College of Art this fall. If you’re in Los Angeles, his work will be part of a group exhibition opening in early June at Albertz Benda. Otherwise, find more on his website and Instagram.

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