The Wicklow artist behind the incredible botanical installation in Jo Malone’s flagship Parisian store

I specialise in botanical casting, an art form that involves pressing plants into clay and creating a plaster cast of the resulting impression.

This technique captures the intricate details of the plants, translating their ephemeral beauty into low-relief artworks. I was originally a museum conservator, having worked at the National Museum of Ireland, the National Trust in the UK and for various award-winning historic houses and museums in Ireland. However, I always wanted to do something creative and I’ve always loved plants and flowers. My mother tells me that when I was a toddler she brought me into a shoe shop as she needed new shoes. When she left she looked down and saw that I too had new shoes. I had helped myself to new sandals with big yellow sunflowers stuck to the front. I was quickly marched back in! Conservation is a creative science, but it requires you to be invisible, whereas I wanted to make my mark.

I set up my studio, Studio Scim, in a converted 18th century grain store in the Wicklow countryside where I also grow plants for use in my work.

I create stand-alone artworks that seek to capture the beauty of the natural world. Innovation is at the heart of my practice so I have also developed a line of products that include candles, window and furniture panels, soap and edibles such as chocolate and fondant. I am currently partnering with a soap maker and an internationally renowned patisserie artist to bring these products into the mainstream. That has been hugely rewarding professionally. I also enjoy sharing my work through teaching. I find it is always a two-way street in terms of learning and, equally importantly, it’s great fun. Being an artist can be a lonely furrow to plough so having students who come and go has been a very enjoyable experience.

I was commissioned to make a floor-to-ceiling botanical feature wall and fireplace surround for Jo Malone of London’s flagship store in the fashionable Le Marais district of Paris.

It was such an exciting commission from both a technical and artistic point of view as it pushed the boundaries of what was possible in the art form. I took a leap of faith and thankfully, so did the Jo Malone design team. We used plants from their iconic perfume range to create the pieces, some of which I grew myself and others that were cut for me from the extensive herbaceous borders of Killruddery House, which is close to my studio. Landing such a commission was quite an amazing experience. They saw my work on the internet, asked for samples and loved it. It was hugely affirmative for me as an artist as I am entirely self-taught.

I would like to work with other interior designers and architects to execute large scale pieces such as external botanical door surrounds, recessed friezes in entrance vestibules or wrap-around botanical shower walls.

When you work with teams that have a great depth of experience and professionalism, projects that would otherwise seem like ambitious pipedreams suddenly become reality.

If I have any single mission, I suppose, it is to cure native plant blindness one piece of art at a time and chip away at the mindset that can conceive of any plant being a ‘weed’.

I live and work in Wicklow, the Garden County, so named because simply stepping out into the countryside is like entering the garden of Eden. From the coast, through the wooded valleys and to the mountains, it teems with delicate cow parsley, lush ferns, foxgloves the colour of amethysts and gorse that smells so exotically of coconut, teasel, herb robert, blackberries, bluebells… I could go on and on.

Love your wildflowers and let them prosper!

They’ll reward you with beauty, bounty and all manner of fascinating little creepy crawlies. I remember the great fun we had as children finding ragweed crawling en masse with black and yellow caterpillars and staring at them for what seemed like hours. I’d hate to think of children missing out on that today.

Being an artist was always my ambition, but as my mother says rather wryly, the Devines are late developers so I came to it later in life.

However, art has always been in my family. My grandfather, great-grandfather, great-aunts and aunts were all hobby painters or sculptors. There were also several inventors and engineers. A great-great uncle built two life-size train carriages in the attic of the family home in Derry, Brandywell House. There was a competition to invent a new coupling system between train carriages that he was determined to win. Every time I smell linseed oil, I am brought back to my grandfather’s studio. I treasure the last painting he ever did which is a portrait of me aged four. He was almost blind by the time he painted it which makes it doubly precious. He also had amazing green fingers and grew his own mushrooms. He lived in the Phoenix Park and would collect starling droppings as fertiliser. They had pet hares and a litter of leverets lived inside their sofa. My father recalls trying to release them into the Furry Glen and dashing back home only to see them peeking out the hole in the sofa at him arriving in after them. My fascination is nature, art and invention so I think in my practice, I didn’t roll too far from the family tree.

The number one Irish brand I love would have to be the sybilline Joanne Hynes.

She has her finger on the fashion pulse, interpreting street culture in such a sure-handed way. Gucci should snap her up. I’ve been a fan of Siné Vasquez’s jewellery for a long time. She distils such diverse aesthetic movements in her work to produce beautifully sophisticated pieces. I also have great admiration for Cloon Keen perfumes and candles. They have a deep sense of place and heritage that translates into their products. For me, they represent a new Ireland; one that is lyrical, confident and international. It’s something that we should have been generations ago.

Nearly everything I make is made to order or is a one-off.

If that sounds daunting, please don’t be daunted. It’s simply a matter of picking up the phone and saying what you’d like – be it a candle or a botanical door for your en-suite. I do have a couple of outlets that sell my artwork – The Open Window Gallery in Rathmines and Sevenoaks and Steele in Bray. However, I have never been particularly interested in retail. I should probably be honest with myself and say that it’s more a case of never being very good at it. I vastly prefer one-off projects that challenge me creatively. If there is one product that I do retail, then it is my knowledge and my inventions via my online tutorial.

The ‘invention’ word usually elicits sideways glances: I find it unearths residual sexism when uttered that truly took me back when I started noticing it.

I have been very lucky in my life to have been brought up by men and women who were without an ounce of sexism in their souls. Quite the opposite in fact. But yes, I have invented my botanical candles, edibles and translucencies. Somebody else, somewhere else and at some other time may have come up with these ideas too of course.

Money was a concern when starting out.

I worked a variety of part-time jobs and the occasional museum consultancy to keep money coming in while I got on my feet artistically. If it paid my studio rent and funded the purchase of materials, I was willing to do it.

If I could work with anyone/any brand in the world, without question it would be to work with O’Donnell + Tuomey Architects.

Their Stone Vessel at Fartha, which was created in collaboration with Joseph Walsh, won the RIAI People’s Choice Award in 2024. I am fascinated by it, its conception and execution. It is a cultural lodestar par excellence; ancient yet modern, earthly yet universal.

The best piece of business advice I have ever received was to invest in professional photography.

Without that, as a maker, you will get nowhere fast. It is a key that opens many doors.

Most useful learning since setting up a business? I think to learn about scale and knowing what scale of business suits your life, your processes, your resources and your philosophy of making.

I’m not a natural business person but I am a good networker and that has been a very important element in whatever success I enjoy.

I donated a piece of art to the Julian Benson Cystic Fibrosis Foundation respite home in Rathgar in memory of my cousin Roisin’s beautiful daughter Caoimhe Walsh – seeing it hanging on the wall was a proud moment.

I was proud that I was able to create something worthy of such an important place. The theme of the piece was “We Are A Garden”. Some of us are tender and need a sheltered spot. A good head gardener knows this and will spend more time and resources to ensure the most delicate flowers amongst us get to bloom too.

How would I like to be remembered? I’d be happy if my art was remembered at all.

I’ll take pre-mortem rather than post-mortem success if it’s on offer!

Feature image photography by Tom Scott