Periwinkle Diaries

Periwinkle Diary, framed
pencil on paper
2007

Periwinkle drawing in progress in the studio
2008

Each year between 2006 and 2012, Tom Phillips drew a detailed visual account of periwinkle flowers, minutely recording the individual characters of apparently unvarying blooms. These words are taken from the occasional blog he kept at the time.

Monday, 30 April 2007
Next year if eyes and hand allow I'll try again if only to relearn the artist's first lesson, so well and so long ago laid down in Plato's theory of forms. The classic periwinkle flower is an amazing construction. Designed (if one may still use that word without prejudice) like a ship's propellor: it is full of energy yet with only wilting and withering in prospect, full of movement but with nowhere to go.