Marita Wai
About
I am an artist, maker and mother based in London, England. I use the Victorian photography process of Cyanotype to create soothing images of the natural world. I grow my own plants and flowers in my tiny city garden and my allotment. Using the Cyanotype process, I turn these plants into artwork using little more than the sunlight, water and Iron salts.
I grew up on a remote island on the West coast of Canada, a wild place, a place where nature reigns. This is where my life long love of the natural world began.
I’ve spent my career working closely with plants and flowers. I have a great love of history, in particular the history of plants, how they appeared in our gardens and the folklore surrounding them.
My art brings an awareness of the beauty and magic nature can add to our everyday lives. I hope to inspire a curiosity of the world around us and encourage everyone to live a life more closely aligned with nature.
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Marita Wai
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Marita Wai
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3 questions on inspiration with
Marita Wai
We're asking artists to choose one notable person, place and object that has inspired them in their journey so far. We're mapping inspiration at a scale never attempted before
Person
Anna Atkins! She was the first woman to work with the cyanotype process shortly after its invention in 1842. She happened to be a family friend of John Herschel, who invented it. Anna Atkins was a botanist and used cyanotype to illustrate thousands of British plants. She is credited as the first person to produce a book with photographs. When I first came across her it was, everything fell into place for me. I love the historical aspect of this process and how it has been used as a way of teaching people more about the plants around us.
Place
This would be Hornby, the island of my childhood. It is an incredibly special place. It is a very small Gulf Islands on the West Coast of Canada, one of many but for some reason it has attracted quite a unique, creative population. Many of the inhabitants of the island are artists, ceramicists, jewelers or create something with their own hands. I think there is something really special about the process of making something with your hands. I’m trying to spend more and more time here. I find it incredibly inspiring. The pace of life is slow, the nearest supermarket two ferries away, not much to do on a friday night but watch the stars slowly populate the sky and it is a blissful contrast to London. Everywhere you go you are in nature surrounded by forest, sea or sky. Everywhere you look there is so much beauty.
Object
Flowers! It has to be flowers. They are my main inspiration. I base whole collections around just one flower. I grow them, usually as many varieties of one species as I can. I photograph them. I research their medicinal properties, their histories and then I print them- on repeat. Over and over until I feel I have captured their essence. If I have to choose just one flower, it would be the Morning Glory, Ipomoea. They have featured heavily in my work. I love their fleeting nature, the flowers only last a day so you need to be quick to catch their blooms before they fade. You need to be paying attention to nature to be rewarded.
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