Botanical series
These works hold two somewhat conflicting ideas simultaneously— they celebrate the sheer beauty of nature and also question our tendency to impose our own ideas and desires on the complex, beautiful, and fragile natural world. By overlaying lines on some of the oil paintings and disjointing the compositions of others, I hope to highlight our hubris and the simplistic ideas we sometimes put on the natural world, while also recognizing that humans have had a hand in cultivating the flowers that we surround ourselves with.
These ideas are a continuation of themes in my artwork of exploitative, extractive, and destructive practices that result from humans considering themselves separate from the rest of nature. With lines representing human intervention, these artworks give form to the damage caused by our actions and remind us of the need for greater care for the environment and curiosity about what we don’t know.
These works hold two somewhat conflicting ideas simultaneously— they celebrate the sheer beauty of nature and also question our tendency to impose our own ideas and desires on the complex, beautiful, and fragile natural world. By overlaying lines on some of the oil paintings and disjointing the compositions of others, I hope to highlight our hubris and the simplistic ideas we sometimes put on the natural world, while also recognizing that humans have had a hand in cultivating the flowers that we surround ourselves with.
These ideas are a continuation of themes in my artwork of exploitative, extractive, and destructive practices that result from humans considering themselves separate from the rest of nature. With lines representing human intervention, these artworks give form to the damage caused by our actions and remind us of the need for greater care for the environment and curiosity about what we don’t know.
Botanical paintings on paper
Like the Botanical oil paintings, these original watercolors are a contemplation about our drive to impose human ideas and desires upon the complexity, beauty and fragility of nature.
Like the Botanical oil paintings, these original watercolors are a contemplation about our drive to impose human ideas and desires upon the complexity, beauty and fragility of nature.
While most of my botanicals are an explosion of colorful celebration, in the works below I depict botanicals minimally. They are botanicals in essence only. They are blackened and therefore help me see how everything has a dark side-- even the colorful bright forms created by flowers. This darkness and mystery is part of what makes the beauty within all of us.
