Rachel Dein specialises in creating botanical art in both plaster and concrete. Rachel’s work evolved from the old tradition of nature printing, the technique of using the surface of a natural object to make a print.

Rachel makes plaster casts of plants and flowers that record all their texture, pattern, and delicacy in exquisite details. Her composition can be as simple as a single stem or as complex as a field of wildflowers, leaves, and grasses. Pendulous bleeding hearts, curly fiddleheads of ferns, and wispy poppies are some of her favorite flowers to cast.

In the light-filled attic studio at her north London home, the artist gently peels back a clay mould to reveal a plaster cast of flowers in amazing details and extraordinary beauty. There is a memorial as well as a celebratory quality to these simple tiles and panels, for they preserve a fleeting moment of glory long after the plants have faded and died. They reflect Rachel’s interest in nature, its transience and tenacity.