The Botanical Bird Art of Hannah Bullen-Ryner

Hannah Bullen-Ryner creates beautiful ephemeral artworks by arranging twigs, leaves, flower petals, and berries into detailed bird portraits.

A trained painter and a photographer, Bullen-Ryner found that going back to nature and channeling her creativity into ephemeral, botanical art was the perfect escape from her anxiety and the “chaos in her brain”.  Using only natural materials found locally and no permanent fixings, the artist creates hauntingly beautiful portraits of birds, complete with feathers made of twigs and tree leaves and eyes made of various berries.

“Finding the medium of land art has allowed my art and my connection to the earth my soul so needed to combine,” the artist told My Modern Met. “As a full-time mama of (nearly) three-year-old twin girls, and someone who suffers from anxiety, my art is my quiet time, my peace.”

Hannah Bullen-Ryner uses only locally-sourced and foraged materials, arranging them into the desired shape, taking some photos and then simply walking away, leaving her beautiful art to be disassembled by a gust of wind or by other elements. But the ephemeral nature of her botanical artworks is actually be design.

“People often ask me why don’t I make something more permanent or they say it’s such a shame that it’s temporary,” Buller-Ryner said. “But for me, it is the ephemeral nature of what I do that has become like therapy for my soul. I get to put down all my anxieties, my fears, all the chaos from my brain and turn it into something beautiful to honor Mother Nature. I take some photos and then walk or cycle away, leaving it all behind and feeling calmer, more connected, and truly lighter.”

For more of Hannah Bullen-Ryner’s botanical birds, visit her website, her Facebook and her Instagram.

For more awesome ephemeral art, check out the carpet wonders of @agito0219, and the driveway illustrations of Diana Wood.