There is something quietly radical about painting ordinary things. A string of garlic. A wooden spoon. A basket of eggs still warm from the nest. These are not glamorous subjects, and that is precisely the point.
The Kitchen Garden Collection is a series of folk art prints painted in gouache, a medium that suits humble subjects perfectly. Gouache has an opacity and a chalky softness that oil and watercolour cannot replicate — it is the paint of old illustrated books, of Scandinavian farmhouse walls, of things made slowly and with care. The muted tones are not an accident. They are a deliberate step away from the bright, saturated world of modern digital art toward something that feels older and quieter.
What the collection contains
Seventeen prints at the time of writing, each one a subject drawn from the working kitchen and the kitchen garden. A proud cockerel strutting through a cornfield. Seven jars of pickles on a worn pantry shelf, each one different, each topped with waxed paper and tied with string. A white colander heaped with bright red cherries, a few spilled out onto the table. Fresh pulled beetroot with its leaves still on. A sourdough loaf with a cut slice and a single stem of wheat.
Some subjects are utensils — a rolling pin dusted with flour, a wooden spoon resting on a board beside a carrot and garlic. Some are ingredients — figs on a chopping board, one cut open to show the interior. Some are somewhere between the two — a basket of fresh laid eggs, a string of hanging garlic, a slab of pale butter beside a wooden handled knife.
The two jugs of flowers sit slightly apart from the rest. A wildflower jug on a worn wooden table against an old white wall. A jug of spring blooms in warm yellow tones. They are not kitchen subjects exactly, but they belong to the same world — the farmhouse, the cottage, the home where things are grown and gathered and brought inside.
Why folk art
Folk art has always painted the everyday. Before galleries and patrons and the idea of art as something elevated and separate from ordinary life, people painted what was around them. The food on the table. The animals in the yard. The vessels they cooked in and ate from.
That tradition feels worth continuing. Not as nostalgia exactly, but as a reminder that the most familiar objects are often the most beautiful ones — a worn chopping board, a terracotta pot with herbs growing in it, a cockerel catching the light in a field of corn.
Gouache suits this tradition because it does not try to be invisible. The brushstrokes are present. The paint has body. Each print carries the feeling of something made by hand even if the process is its own kind of modern alchemy.
The collection is growing
New prints are being added as the series develops. Subjects are chosen partly by instinct and partly by response — the cherry colander, the rolling pin, the wooden spoon with vegetables were among the earliest to find an audience, which suggests that the most functional and honest subjects resonate most strongly.
If you would like to follow the collection as it grows it is available on Redbubble and on Pinterest under The Farmhouse Kitchen Collection. Each print is available in a range of sizes and formats including square, portrait and landscape to suit different walls and different rooms.
The Kitchen Garden Collection is available now on Redbubble.
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