This is my safe space to be open, vulnerable. These paintings are all in states of bloom, maybe even peak blossom, the zenith of their short lived existence, the part that we get to watch unfold with breath and anticipation. All of the anxious buildup of energy around creating the thing is the hard work. As Joan Mitchell admired Vincent Van Gogh, in life there is so much anguish and yet there is the sunflower; this is gratitude.
I’m compelled to the whimsy that exists in Nature. The weight of being, the armor we start to push out from within to protect and ward off. These paintings are the safe haven to be vulnerable and alive. Edmund Burke wrote about the Sublime in nature, the intense lightning strike of realizing pain, death, and glory in the face of terror; a calamitous cacophony of flesh and metal or mountain sea and sky.
In this work, like memento mori, they are full of mortality, emotions, feeling, insecurity. They are small protestations to the drudgery of the mundane and the pain of existence. These are little love letters to the warm days of ecstasy that are captured by the autumn bouquet or the first blooming of the spring crocus, the first bit of purple to pop out of the snow. Flowers are gratitude and love.
