As many of you know, last month I launched my new website, featuring an online gallery of original botanical paintings, an online shop and a blog where I can share my thoughts, stories and experiences as a botanical artist.
Creating this website has been a very important step in my journey as an artist. For a long time, I dreamed of having a space where people could not only see my botanical art but also understand the stories behind each painting, the inspiration I find in nature and the time and care that goes into creating every original artwork.
As a London botanical artist, I spend many hours observing plants, studying their shapes, colours and details and trying to capture not only their beauty but also their unique character. Every leaf, petal and stem has its own story.
Orange Rose, original painting
Launching My New Online Gallery
Only three weeks after launching my new website, something happened that I will always remember.
I received an email saying that one of my original botanical paintings had been sold.
At first, I thought it was spam. It seemed almost too unexpected, so I did not pay much attention to it.
Then, five minutes later, I received another email.
A gentleman had purchased one of my original botanical paintings — a rose study — as a birthday gift for his wife. Her birthday was the following day and he asked if there was any possibility that she could receive the artwork in time.
I stopped for a moment and realised what was happening.
My first sale through my new website was not just an online purchase. It was someone choosing my artwork to become part of a very personal and meaningful moment.
That feeling was very special.
When someone buys an original painting, they are not simply buying something to hang on a wall. They are choosing a piece of creativity, emotion and the artist’s connection with nature.
I wanted to make this first experience as memorable as possible.
I discovered that the delivery address was in London, not far from where I live. Then I started thinking: perhaps I could do more than simply arrange a delivery.
I decided to contact the client and offer to personally deliver the painting the following morning.
I also explained that the artwork already had its own beautiful frame because it had participated in an exhibition in Notting Hill last autumn. The frame had already been carefully chosen to complement the painting and present it ready to hang.
The client was very happy with this idea.
The next morning, I carefully prepared the rose painting and took it to its new home.
The most beautiful part was that the recipient did not know she was receiving an artwork as a birthday gift. It was a complete surprise.
When she opened it and saw the painting, her reaction was one I did not expect. She looked emotional, surprised and genuinely moved.
Watching that moment reminded me why I paint.
Painting my Orange Rose
Why Original Art Creates a Special Connection
On my way home I kept thinking about the journey this particular painting had made.
From my studio, where I had spent quiet hours observing the rose before I touched the paper. Through exhibitions — months of being seen by strangers, considered, remembered and then seen again. Onto the new website. And then, finally, into someone’s home on a birthday morning, as the first thing her husband had chosen to give her.
That is a long way for a painting to travel.
There is something in that journey that I find genuinely moving — not as a metaphor but as a fact. This rose left my studio as a piece of work I had made alone, in silence, with no particular person in mind. And it arrived in someone’s life on a day that mattered to her.
Original art does something that reproductions cannot. It carries time — the specific, unrepeatable time of the person who made it. The hours of looking, the small decisions, the light in the room on the afternoon it was finished. When a painting enters a new home, it does not simply fill a space on a wall. It becomes part of a life already being lived.
For some people, that is a celebration — a memory of a garden, a person, a place they want to hold close. For others, a gift chosen not because it is convenient but because it feels exactly right for exactly the right person. And sometimes it is simply the wish to have something handmade and living nearby.
I believe those things matter.
Not because I paint them — but because I think we all need objects in our lives that were made with attention. Things that someone sat with, returned to and cared about before we ever held them.
This first sale from my new website was, for me, much more than a transaction. It was a reminder that a painting is not finished when I put down the brush. It is finished when it finds the person it was always going to find.
Walking home that morning, I felt something quiet and clear.
Like a full stop at the end of a very long sentence.
Exhibiting in Notting Hill, London October 2025
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Inessa Falina is a London-based botanical artist and teacher. A fellow of the Linnean Society in London and member of the Chelsea Physic Garden Florilegium Society and Society Botanical Artists, she has exhibited at The Mall Galleries and Chelsea Old Town Hall, with work held in private collections across Europe, the USA and Australia. Through her art and teaching, she helps people slow down, observe nature deeply and find calm through the practice of painting. You can follow her work on Instagram at @inessa.falina
— Inessa
