We've all played that quiet childhood game — plucking petals one by one, whispering the words into the air and hoping the last one lands on the answer we want. It's a ritual as old as longing itself: a small, tender act of surrendering your fate to a flower. When I created He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not, I wanted to take that familiar game of affection and doubt and bring it into a surreal, living world — where the flower doesn't just hold the answer, but holds a face.
She stands still, composed, holding the stem with quiet certainty. But look at her eyes — those large, expressive, heavy-lidded eyes — and you'll find everything she isn't saying. There's longing in them. Vulnerability. And beneath it all, a kind of self-possession that suggests she already knows the answer, even if she isn't ready to hear it.
The face nestled in the petals is soft and real in a way she is not. He is the dream; she is the dreamer. And the watering can at her feet tells you she has been tending to this — whatever this is — for a long time. To give the piece a timeless, nostalgic quality, I chose a muted olive and chartreuse palette — the colours of old photographs and faded summers. There's nothing sharp or modern here. Everything is softened by time, as if the memory of this feeling is more vivid than the feeling itself.
The Game We Never Outgrow
What makes this piece resonate — I hope — is that the game never really ends. We play it at seven with daisies in a field. We play it at thirty-seven, staring at a phone screen waiting for a message. The ritual changes; the vulnerability doesn't.
He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not is for everyone who has ever held their breath over a last petal.
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