Frida Kahlo, one of the greatest Mexican artists in history and one of the highest selling women in art, only became well known to the public decades after her death. Today, she became a feminism icon inspiring people around the world, she persevered her passion for arts throughout her difficult life and turned her pain into beauty.
Frida was born in 1907 in Coyoacán, Mexico and died in 1954 at the age of 47, reported to have died from a pulmonary embolism. She never visited Australia in life, but she's widely loved by Australian today, in 2016, the Art Gallery of New South Wales presented an exhibition of 40 artworks of Frida and her husband Diego, it was a hit.
As a matter of fact, the country Mexico that Frida was from shares quite of a lot of common characteristics with Australia, both lands have great varieties of gorgeous plants and wonderful wildlife, bold and vibrant colours are greatly appreciation by people from both countries.
I myself, with no exception, had been a huge fan of Frida and I decided to create a pattern with Frida illustration and some Australian elements, and this is how 'Frida Down Under' was born.
I started with Frida's portrait, her iconic bushy unibrow and upper lip mustache are not to be missed, oh yes, the flower crown is another prominent feature!!! My initial thought was to draw Waratahs for the flower crown but since my husband Allen was working on quite a lot of protea & waratah sketches at the same time, I decided to go with peonies instead.
Frida had many pets, most well known ones includes the spider monkeys and the Amazon parrots. I decided to draw a Koala and a Scarlet Macaw. I was a bit cheeky with the Koala as I found one on Allen's sketch book that he drew before, I had it traced on illustrator and went on to draw my own Macaw.
Instead of having the flowers and plants prints scattered around, I drew the flower arch, it was inspired by Natalie Ness, one of my fellow stallholders at the Rocks, who has the most amazing stall display by using a flower arch on top of her cash counter. I drew banksias, gum flowers, grevilleas and chrysanthemums for the flower arch, these are some of the very popular plants grown in Australia.
It took roughly 3 weeks of turnaround time from submitting my design til receipt of the fabrics, had butterflies revealing them but the printing turned out to be fabulous!!
Frida Down Under bags were launched in Oct. 2021 and are now available in below styles of bags / purses, I'm glad that they are loved by so many of you!!! Thank you for your support of small businesses like ours!!
