“I have invented a new way of imitating flowers,” she said. And so her life work began, at age 72. Delany began work on her celebrated Flora Delanica – not a herbarium of dried plants but a florilegium of images of flowers made of tiny pieces of colored cut paper.
Using tissue and papers of all hues and shades, she cut the wafer-thin tissue without any drawings or apparent planning. She pasted the cut-outs of the intricate parts of the flowers collage-fashion onto black paper to create perfect reproductions of living plants.