For years I have been two things at once: a painter and a flower farmer. I’ve been balancing an indoor life of abstract, linear creation with an outdoor existence in growing and selling cut flowers like garden roses, native perennials, and annuals. For most of those years, I have told myself and others that the two worlds do not collide, that a strong line separates the art studio and the flower field. I do not know who I was kidding, or what I was protecting. Flower farming, like my art, is a practice in form, color, and repetition; from field prep to variety selection to harvesting the same crop day after day, so many aspects of farming are parallel to my art practice.
My paintings are strict in their straightness, order, measurements, and ratios, exactly like how I am strict in the field for perfect lines, even numbers, consistency, and efficiency amongst the rows and rows of flowers. My two professions are similar to one another, despite my attempts to believe there cannot be any flowers in my paintings nor paintings in the field. I am surrounded by color and form every day; whether that be in the studio surrounded by panels and paint, or in a hot sunny field immersed in scents and pollinators. How can they not bleed together?
I either come home with dry hands covered in oil paint and joint compound, or with dry hands covered in dirt and blisters. I wear the work home with me, often going from one action directly to the next, so it’s hard to believe I’ve tricked myself for so long that the two have nothing to do with one another. Or perhaps, they could have nothing to do with one another, but now I am giving up on my pointless efforts of living a double life and finally letting them mingle and communicate.
These paintings are of farm flowers, or of the farm itself, distilled into the linear and repetitive way I organize color and form in my mind. I’ve challenged myself to pay attention and note the awe I experience in the flower fields when certain flowers and their colors are paired and when the fields as a whole sing with their repeated straight lines and edges, and to then bring those inspirations into the studio and paint them.
