Interviewed by
Liudmyla HUMENIUK, The Day
Natalia Bortsova
The florist’s art - bringing one flower together with another, making
a composition, and giving
it to one’s beloved or to just liven up a home or office -
is great art.
Since Ukraine’s Declaration of Independence began our march toward a new quality of life, floristry has taken its rightful place among the arts. Only some ten or fifteen years ago most Ukrainians were used to low standards in services and had no idea how much light and joy flowers could bring to their lives. Literally a new era of flowers has begun in Kyiv thanks to the Roksolana Company. The Roksolana school has produced dozens of talented florists deeply in love with the botanical world and with profound good taste. Florist and designer Natalia Bortsova is one of them.
Each of her creation - be it a bouquet, a composition, a panel, or a collage - reveals her unique talent to see something unexpected and indisputably beautiful in the most ordinary things.
Natalia studied the art of flower arrangement at Roksolana under the guidance of Peter Hess and Karl Zuber, both top masters from Switzerland. Natalia has learned a great deal from florists of the Baltic states, which she often visits. Soon she began to receive invitations to international floral competitions. Her collages and photos of floral compositions were on display at a 1993 exhibition of flowers in Scotland.
Natalia, where do you get material for your works?
One need only look around to find a host of beautiful plants of fantastic form and shape in a city park, a forest, even in a shady alley between multistoried buildings. Once I went to a marketplace and saw an old woman selling beans of unusual coloring. She was very surprised when I asked her to sell me all her beans.
“Why do you need so much?” she asked.
“For beauty,” I replied. “Now I see... You are so beautiful. Perhaps it is because you apply beauty mask to your face,” she concluded.
Do you usually work alone or in cooperation with other artists?
I am part of a team of three who share my views, ideas, and opinions. In fact, our minds are so alike that any of us can finish the work the other has started and no one will ever notice a difference. No such thing is possible with an artist who paints an oil picture. It will immediately show differences in manner. The team spirit is so strong in our group that we practically never disagree. Even if we do, it is about insignificant details and never about an idea in general.
Can anyone be taught how to arrange a beautiful bouquet or make a stylish composition?
I think it quite possible. Girls who come to us with no experience whatever learn quickly to differentiate between a genuine beauty and a fake, even a most successful one. Good taste can be taught.
How one can know that a bouquet is correctly made?
Natalia Bortsova at Kyiv’s International Florists’ Competition, the main figures of which were
music and flowers
Classical standards of combining colors and hues have existed for centuries. For instance, blue should be combined only with yellow and never with green.
Florists now claim that absolutely all colors are compatible with each other. In a bouquet I can combine red and violet, although a rule forbids me to do so. These two colors exist side by side in nature. At the beginning of my career as a florist I would not dare to use blue and red together. Today I do it often.
If you were asked to make a bouquet for a sad, lonely person, what flowers would you pick?
Well, I’d probably choose a weeping willow’s branches as the basic material, not to make the man sadder but because the willow is considered today the most popular component for making bouquets and other floral compositions. It enables a florist to create a bouquet of the most fantastic form. Perhaps, looking at the intricately intertwined branches, he would be able to forget his sadness.
What flower would you pick to decorate the willow branches?
A flower with a pleasant fragrance will do. Perhaps, a lily. It is an optimistic plant that gives man hope and confidence. No wonder the lily was considered the symbol of royal power in a medieval France.
Are you sure a viewer will be able to perceive your idea the way you want it to be understood? I doubt if anyone knows the symbolic meaning of this flower?
Yes, I am.
What do you think is the least modest flower?
Gloriosa. It is like a flash of lightning. This flower has something that makes it look very much like a circus clown. A cactus is an insolent plant too, and it can be a perfect material for a bouquet like any other flower. And its insolence can be accentuated by clothespins.
Is there a plant that you dislike?
Oh no, not one. Although many believe that a carnation, especially a red one, is a bad flower, I think they are wrong. For instance, in Europe the carnation is one of the most favored flowers. Large pageantry balls are made of carnations. And it is often used as an element in wedding bouquets.
Do you believe that flowers can talk? When someone is cutting a flower, I seem to hear it screaming with pain...
Sometimes I feel kind of embarrassed, too. When I am in a flower shop or in a florist’s salon, I have a sensation that I am surrounded with living creatures who beg for mercy. It is important how we treat flowers: bring a bunch of cut flowers to the home of a callous person, and they won’t live a day. But when you treat them with love and care, they can stand fresh and beautiful for a whole month. They react instantly to the nature of the person who gives or accepts them as a gift. If both sides are kind, the flowers will live a long time. They are capable of picking human energy. You know, all my botanist friends like to say it with flowers.
Really? What do they speak with them about?
They talk with them as if they were their children. They soothe and even kiss them.
