The Grand Insect Hotel
The insect project started it. A proper insect house, built to attract solitary bees, ladybirds, lacewings, and whatever else fancied moving in. Tubes and hollows and stacked compartments, each one a different invitation. Functional, deliberate, and surprisingly beautiful once you look closely.
The painting took that structure and ran with it. The circular holes and tubes of the insect house became the scaffolding for the whole composition: dark openings scattered across a warm wooden surface, each one holding something different. Some are empty. Some are occupied. A spider has set up in one, a bee in another. A butterfly passes through. The residents do not coordinate. They just coexist.
Around the edges, the flowers press in. Sunflowers, poppies, daisies, and red blooms crowd the frame the way they crowd a garden, not arranged but competing. The insects live among them and inside them. The hotel is not separate from the garden. It is part of it.
Acryla gouache gave me the flat, saturated colour this needed. The darks in the holes sit heavy against the bright flowers. The greens push forward. Nothing recedes politely. The whole thing is loud in the way an actual insect house is loud if you stop and listen.
The project gave me the chance to apply some creativity to how things roll in an insect house. What goes on inside those tubes. Who moves in, who builds, who hunts, who just shelters for the night. The painting is that curiosity made visible.