We’re approaching that time when our gardens’ blooms are exhausted, we (maybe) have our spring bulbs planted, and we’re bracing for winter. Inside, it can be a flowery wonderland with well nurtured houseplants, and botanically themed furnishings and décor. Including locally designed, locally made wallpaper by artist Briana Corr Scott.

The Dartmouth, N.S., artist is a woman of many talents. She paints, writes kids’ books, including the newly released While You Were Sleeping, creates paper-doll kits, does stop-motion video and digital art, and sometimes illustrates for Saltscapes. Her designs are rooted in nature, with flowers, seashells, wild creatures, and gardens being regular themes throughout her work.

“People describe both me and my art as whimsical and in touch with my inner child,” Briana says. In art school, she recognized she wanted to explore the things she had loved from her youth in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. “I was surrounded by nature my whole childhood,” she says, adding she’s drawn from that life since age 12.

Naturally, she gardens at home.

“I love so-called weeds as much as I do flowers,” she says. “I tend to think a lot about ‘Why is this a weed? And why must I pluck this?’ and so my garden is wild and tangly; great for pollinators.”

Nature’s underdogs attract her. “I love to paint a beautiful landscape and sunset, then put a field of purple knapweed in the foreground, and people will love it. I like elevating something others find common.” While she is fond of all flowers, Briana has favourites. “I paint yarrow all the time because I saw so much on Sable Island that when I see the flower, I think of that experience.”

She adds that she loves strange-looking flowers, and they appear in her work often: artichoke flowers, flowers that look dangerous like crown of thorns, sea holly, “something oddly shaped and different, like bee balm. "You’ll never find me painting just a lovely red rose!”

Her wallpaper had its genesis in 2016 when Briana had a painting exhibition at Argyle Fine Art gallery in Halifax. “I created a seaweed wallpaper design to go behind these little observational paintings of seashells that I had made,” she recalls. “Each painting was about 4 inches square (25 square centimetres), and I wanted to create a sensation that felt like you were walking up to a tidal pool on a beach to look at the life there.”

She found creating this one-off wallpaper so joyful that she began learning patterns, with the goal of creating commercial wallpapers.

Patterns need to match up between each strip of wallpaper to fit beautifully and seamlessly, and she practised this technique faithfully. She began using some of the repeating designs on the clothing for her paper doll kits, and for the endpapers in her books. “People began asking if these could be printed as wallpaper, so I started researching the printing process.”

Wallpaper fell out of fashion for some years, especially with the neutral palettes that were dominating many décor styles for the last decade. Briana has a theory, however, that post-COVID, we all just want to feel alive, “we’re looking for colour and pattern and that reinvigoration of life for our homes, and wallpaper is a part of that.”

Instead of manufacturing her wallpaper overseas, Briana found a local company that was willing to meet her environmental standards and needs. The company ordered a large format printer, and Briana has eco-friendly options for wallpaper that don’t contain lead or plastics. “I enjoy learning new techniques and so researching the art and craft of making wallpaper appealed to me,” she says. “It’s wonderful to use my local economy.”

Demand for her wallpaper has been strong since it went on sale in the spring. Some customers order directly off her website for smaller projects, but Briana also has been in touch with local interior designers in the area. Her wallpapers made in four different materials, including two that are peel-and-stick removable, ideal for those who rent and want something easy to remove.

As part of her creative process, Briana says she needs to see everything inside out. She wallpapered her dining room with a mural of all the things she loves and printed it as a mural, “and all four walls are covered with ocean and islands and flowers and seals and sailboats,” she says. “I learned how to scale up the paintings digitally, how to lay out the design, measure the wall, and instructions to the printer. Now I have a beautiful mural in my house.”

Of her commercially available designs, Briana is fondest of “Unicorns in the Garden.” It’s a blue and white design. “From a distance you just see flowers,” she says. “But up close you see these girls holding and caring for baby unicorns, braiding each other’s hair, reading books … doing some self-care among the flowers.”

The design came about in the winter during a low period in her life, and as she repeatedly drew pictures of girls with unicorns, she realized she was drawing, caring for herself.

“I love looking at this pattern, and it’s so wonderful to be able to nurture the part of you that is creative,” she says.