As a painter, I am attracted to flowers for their formal qualities; color, shape, texture. I am interested in the flower’s place historically in painting. Flowers seem to be accepted in painting by everyone – seasoned art viewers as well as people outside the art world who have limited knowledge of and experience with paintings. This nearly universal acceptance makes flowers a great subject to engage viewers and draw them in. Trojan-horse style. I hope my flowers can push the limited expectations. I would like my flowers to move beyond the traditional notions of the pretty, the feminine, etc. (although they definitely embody those notions as well.) The names themselves can be revealing – Black Scabiosa, Red Anemone, Pink Poppy. There is a range of evocative and nuanced feelings connected to the names alone, some sinister or threatening. Flowers are erotic, somber, fragile and powerful, delicate and of course beautiful.

Most commonly I paint from the southern California landscape – which often includes flowers, either wild in or cultivated in parks or yards. I think of these paintings as ‘found’ landscapes, as I don’t intervene at all but simply paint what I see. With the Anniversary and Valentine Flower paintings, I went to the flower district – a six-block area in downtown LA with an endless variety of flowers brought in from all over the world. I discovered that selecting the flowers and making these bouquets was fun and exciting. For the first time I decided to paint from these bouquets, opposed to the ‘found’ compositions of my landscape paintings, these were highly arranged. This control over the subject allowed for arranging and rearranging and naturally led to a series.