Botanical Murals

Charlotta Janssen was inspired to create these 9.5 foot celing murals in 2019 when she discovered illustrations by the Flemish miniaturist, Jacob Hoefnagel. Janssen reinterpreted some of her favorite illustrations to create these striking, larger than life works that now hang from the ceiling of Hudson Milliner Art Salon in Hudson, NY.

Ceilings (or "the new frontier" as Janssen refers to it) are often a missed oppurtunity to display artwork. The idea to create ceiling murals started with her Brooklyn based resturaunt, Chez Oskar, located in Bed Stuy. Soon after their debut, the process of making the flora and fauna of each scene come to life became contagious, and thus the Botanical series was born.

Charlotta Janssen, along with her painting assistant Eva Marie Lansberry, continued the series and brought her murals to Hudson in May of 2019 for the annual citywide design event, Design Hudson. In additon to large scale murals, Janssen also created a chaise and several chairs to accompany the works. All of the furniture pieces are painted in complimentary hand painted fabric, featuring different plants and creatures on each. The large scale murals themselves are on canvas and are attatched to a removable custom made wood and metal frame.

Charlottan Janssen uses shadows and gradiating colors, which she says was done in order to create a depth of field, making the ceiling seem taller in a way than it is. She also incoorperates an aged effect using her signature "rusting," by spraying coppersalts on top of layers of iron paint. The unifying color pallette and style of Janssen's paintings have a strong pressence that easily translates to many surfaces cohesively, but rather than acting as a uniform pattern, the composition contains interesting details in every corner, with completely unique depictions of each and every one of her diverse subjects.

Charlotta Jannsen's Botanical Mural Series is now available in various sizes, made with archival ink and printed on German Etsching Paper.