Dandelions and Double Yellows is an arts, nature and noticing project by Helen Thomas. The project is an invitation to reconsider the often overlooked, unplanned plants in our everyday surroundings.
Dandelions and Double Yellows involved the creation of a new body of paintings inspired by urban wild plants. Community engagement elements of the project encouraged people to notice, and share responses to, spontaneous flora in our neighbourhoods and everyday surroundings.
Dandelions and Double Yellows – exhibition
The exhibition at Wakefield Cathedral in July and August 2021 was part of Wakefield Council’s Festival of the Earth. The exhibition included sixteen paintings that were designed to complement the internal architecture and spaces of the Cathedral. Some of the paintings were painted from direct observation of urban wild plants in Wakefield, others were painted in the studio working from photographs, field notes and memory.
Dandelions and Double Yellows, exhibition detail 
7386 I, acrylic on panel, Helen Thomas, 2020 
Herbicide, acrylic on panel, 21.5 x 30cm Helen Thomas 2021 
‘Moss, Ings Road Roundabout’ acrylic on panel, Helen Thomas 2021 
Memories of Moss, installation shot 
‘Memories of Moss’, detail 
‘Garden Street’ and Ings Road Roundabout’, watercolour on rice paper, Helen Thomas, 2021. Dandelions and Double Yellows, Wakefield Cathedral 
Detail of south aisle screen installation 
Together and Between by Helen Thomas, installation shot 
Together and Between, Clover detail, Helen Thomas 
Groundsel Cathedral Grounds in St Mark’s chapel
Accompanying text
Dr Judith Tucker, University of Leeds, wrote a beautifully considered essay to accompany the exhibition. You can read ‘Groundsel and moss: particularity, time and place in the paintings of Helen Thomas’ here:
Dandelions and Double Yellows – Your Gallery
Between May and July 2021 people from the Wakefield District were invited to share pictures of pavement plants, that they saw in their everyday surroundings, to be shown in a digital gallery.
More than 50 people from the Wakefield district – and further afield – submitted over 80 pictures. People’s responses to urban wild plants included photography, painting, drawing, digital images, lyrics and printmaking.
You can see the selected entries in Dandelions and Double Yellows – Your Gallery. The online gallery is hosted by Creative Wakefield and was part of Wakefield’s Festival of the Earth in 2021.
Support and Funding
‘Dandelions and Double Yellows’ was supported using public funding by Arts Council England and part funded by Wakefield Council as part of Festival of the Earth in 2021. The project was also supported in kind by The Art House, Makey Wakey and by Wakefield Cathedral who hosted the exhibition
