When you purchase a botanical gift from Orchid & Pine, you're supporting a local community of Northern California artists.
Local roots and community love is a big part of our mission and we absolutely love to highlight the amazing humans that we get to co-create and make magic with.
This month we are featuring the one and only Cheyanne Donald of White Rabbit Ink.
We've asked her a few questions so you can get to know the amazing talent behind our one-of-a-kind handmade floral cards. We teamed up with Cheyanne, a.k.a. Chey, in 2023 and we absolutely love working with her.
Chey not only has a great eye for color and intricate details, she also ensures that she understands our brief and the vision behind each collection. We love working with Chey and hope you enjoy learning more about her here!
About Chey:
Cheyanne Donald is a daydreamer, who takes her whimsical imagination into her art.
Creating with bright colors, smooth lines and a fascination for all things, Cheyanne brings to life her vision of the world to connect and to share.
"Art is about giving the viewer the opportunity to join in on your illusions. It is a unique outlet to create new perspectives and experiences by way of whichever tools you are presented with."
Cheyanne's goal is to take the bits and pieces of life that bring her joy and make them accessible to those around her. To read more about Cheyanne, explore our Q&A with her below.
Q & A with Chey.
Thank you for sharing your story with me Cheyanne.
I know that you were born in Alaska in a goldmine which I find a fascinating story. Would you like to share a little bit more about that or favorite story from your childhood?
My whole childhood was like a playground. There was nothing that wasn’t attainable. I didn’t realize how many nos and rules there were in the world until I moved to California.
Everything was always yes. Can you do this? Yes. If you wanted something you just learned how to make it. My mom always likes to talk about the elaborate dresses I would make out of duct tape and toilet paper! LOL.
While I don’t remember the gold mine, my mom has lots of stories from my childhood. When I was 4 years old we moved into the house that we started building. My mom was always drawing, my dad was always building, and so there was creation everywhere. And we lived in a very remote area, so lots of playing outside and creating worlds around me.
I think, like now, I was always busy making, doing, seeing, feeling. And so I live my life in a way that’s full of creation and seeing the world in feelings, colors, textures and playfulness.
This is so amazing Cheyanne and it really shows in just how creative you are. Your work is so colorful, so full of visual candy and rich with nature and all the things that inspire you. We're curious - what’s your favorite medium?
Oh that’s so hard to choose! I will pick up anything and use it to make something else. But, I love the way that ink feels as it’s being laid onto paper. The sound of the pen scratching across the surface below. The shapes and textures that emerge based on what you dip into the ink to use. And the simplicity of a single color creating a whole scene in front of you with just a few brush strokes and splatters.
I have soooo many things in the works, but I’m currently LOVING doing pet portraits. Not realistic ones, but trying to capture the expressions of people’s fuzz butts, and then taking them and giving them so much color that they look like a dream.
I also just finished something out of my wheel house, I got to work on digital backdrops for a local dance company. They did a project called nightmare before nutcracker, what if the rats win? so it was dark and haunted. I got to take these ideas and play with pops of bright colors and lighthearted creepiness. It was so much fun to dig deep into my artistic space and create sour candy land, and haunted places with little rats hidden all over every illustration… I’m kinda proud of myself!
