A Pocket Full of Daises investigates how materiality and painting can be used as a vehicle to gently express and heal from lingering mental illness. Ashlee Becks' artistic process is a labour of love: slow, deliberate, and deeply personal. Flora, depicted in bloom and decay, dominates the work and acts as a motif for the fluctuating stages of recovery. Collage reflects the complex and layered experience of dealing with mental illness. A poem written by the artist is included in select paintings, abstracted and cropped. The text is autobiographical and mentions flowers and painting as a way to occupy the mind and ward off intrusive thoughts of past trauma.
Accompanying repetitive imagery and text are moments of kitsch aesthetic. Inspired by the common patch work quilt, strokes mimicking the act of stitching line the boarder of paintings and pay homage to "women's work". This nod to the domestic aims to embrace the feminine and re-situate "women's work" as capable of being both intelligent and an act of self-care.