Capturing the flowing beauty of nature, the work of Candice Gray marries traditional gouache and pastels with fresh modern colour.

Hi Candice! Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be an illustrator and textile designer?

Hi! I am a printed textile designer based in Oxfordshire (UK) I specialise in hand-painted florals and love to paint with gouache. After graduating from Winchester School of Art in 2019 with a degree in printed textiles, I went on to work for a print design studio in London. Since then I set up an instagram page for my work and a few years down the line I am now a full time textile designer.

We absolutely love your work and the way you capture florals with such movement. What is it about the natural world, and flowers in particular, that is an endless source of inspiration to you?

Thankyou so much! They’re just so organic, from their shapes, through to the colours. They make the best muse to draw from. Nature has an abundance of flower variety’s, there is always something new to draw.

Your work seems to reflect the current “cottagecore” movement and collective desire for a more traditional, slower pace of life, and the romanticisation for pastoral living. Is this something you feel inspires your newer work?

Absolutely! I adore the ‘cottagecore’ movement and I love the feel of nostalgia it brings. I like the idea of making more traditional designs feel modern through the use of contemporary and fresh colour palettes.

We love the loose way you put down paint and how the brush strokes are so visible in each piece. Can you tell us a little bit about your process and the materials you use?

I always hand-paint everything I do. My go to material is gouache, I particularly like how creamy it is to work with and it gives some really bright colours. I often water down gouache as I enjoy the painterly feel it gives in my work. I scan in all of my work and use photoshop to clean up designs and to put them into repeat.

Your wonderful colour sensibility makes adds a fresh modern look to your work. How big is colour planning a part of your process and where do you seek colour inspiration?

I often feel colour is the most important part of a design, because of this colour planning is a huge part of my process. I will always come up with a palette before I design as well as roughly work out proportions of how much of each colour is used. I get most of my colour inspiration from nature. Nature does a lot of the hard work for you and it’s organic colours make fantastic colour palettes.

What’s next for you, do you have any upcoming projects you can share with us?

2022 will be filled with lots of exciting projects that I will get to reveal throughout the year, as for now I am currently working on designing some new prints and products for my own brand!

You can find more from Candice at candicegray.co.uk