The Way of Fowers

When I was a child, I never wanted a garden… I much preferred Art to Weeding, coloring with my 2 favorite crayons, the brick red and the forest green. I drew flowers on blank pieces of paper and “planted” them on my bedroom walls. I wanted to cover my walls with art - not necessarily pretty flowers but flowers that spoke to me – angry flowers, sad flowers, cheerful flowers. The unexpected stillness of the Covid-19 pandemic echoed the self-contained world of my childhood artmaking. Turning my attention to the real flowers that arrived with grocery deliveries, I rediscovered the profound joy of experimenting with color, backgrounds, and composition. Printing these photographs and arranging them in my studio evoked the same sense I experienced as a child “planting” my walls with crayon drawings. The magic is seeing the flower in your mind’s eye, the excitement of the beginning. The science is standing back and thinking how to make it real, how to get the long stem to balance on the candlestick. Working with my flower project is a return to childhood play and the pleasure of invention. “The Way of Flowers” explores my ongoing fascination with the expressive potential of a flower, a connection that traces back to my childhood crayon drawings.