Flowers Help

One of the nice things about having an art exhibition is that you’re asked to write artist statements and to otherwise be articulate about your work. I know that the artist statement in general is a form that is a bit tricky — sometimes pedantic, preachy, overly full of jargon. Sometimes it doesn’t seem to match the art it talks about. But it does give the artist a moment to gather thoughts around a recent body of work and that’s a worthwhile endeavour. So when Colette of Wallace Galleries asked me to expand some of my thoughts on my upcoming show there on May 8th, I thought it might be good to share them here as well, since the in-person conversations that an artist would normally have won’t be possible due, of course, to Covid-19. So imagine we’re having a glass of wine in a gallery setting and I’m telling you the story of how this body of work came together. I hope you enjoy it.

If I’ve learned anything from this past year, is that flowers matter to people. By the time the pandemic started I had painted a number of large floral pieces. I was interested in an immersive experience. I wanted to paint from the viewpoint of the person leaning into a bouquet of flowers and absorbing the scent and the sensations of the textures, just the glorious experience we’ve all had of breathing in all that beauty and perfume. Maybe someone gave you the bouquet to celebrate a birthday or to commemorate an accomplishment or maybe to console.  

We had been to Rome for a month in November of 2019 and stayed near the Campo de’Fiori, and often brought home flowers from the famous market there. I wanted to capture some of that feeling, too, just how it feels to bring a bouquet home to enjoy for no reason other than to be in the presence of beauty. It made our apartment feel more like a home immediately, setting the bouquets on the kitchen table or by the windowsill.  

I’d been working on paintings from our Rome trip at the beginning of 2020, when we first started hearing murmurings of the pandemic. I had been reminiscing about all I loved about Rome. You can go into any church in Rome and see an anonymous sculpture of an angel, or look at a candelabra, or the marble inlay on the floor and see a refined quality and subtlety of vision and execution. My faith had been renewed in the objective quality of art as a lasting value, no matter the subject or style. Whatever it was that I was looking at, I leaned in to see it more closely. We visited all of the Caravaggios in Rome, and I looked closely at the surfaces, getting as near as was permissible. 

There was a still life show at the Corsini Galleria and we went to view it twice. Even after a lifetime of looking at still life, I was so taken by the eternal themes – of transience, and of the passage of time. Painted 400 years ago, these paintings continue to hold the viewers’ attention, drawing us in. I was also, as I always am when I travel to museums, interested in all the Baroque paintings. I’ve always studied this particular period, trying to learn the secrets of it. The dramatic lighting, radical painting style, and the raw emotion of this period never fail to excite me. 

Coming home from Rome then, I wanted to apply all of those inspiring things that I’d absorbed and thought about while away. I began to delve into the photos I’d taken in Rome along with some that I’d taken the previous year of peonies. I began to delve deeper into the structure and colours of flowers and work at building intense compositions that are both dramatic and freeing, bold and inviting. I want the viewer to feel immersed. 

At the beginning of the pandemic, I just painted. I didn’t imagine that anyone would be wanting art works for some time. This was perhaps just the freedom I needed to paint exactly what I wanted to paint. I constructed expansive bouquets of flowers because they consoled, gave hope, and they were a sensory experience that I craved when we couldn’t do much else or go anywhere. They filled our home with hope and beauty in a time of uncertainty and worry. They were a balm and they uplifted when it was easy to despair. I didn’t know that this would also translate so directly to my viewers, but it has. I began to get queries for my work from all over the world. Flowers matter, beauty matters, and flowers help in that they give us pause. The experience of leaning into a bouquet of flowers and smelling can be so grounding and I know that flowers have helped me through this time, and I hope they help others, too.  

Thanks for reading my thoughts on the work. If you’d like to see the work digitally, you can do so on my website or at Wallace Galleries. Contact the gallery if you are interested in a particular piece of if you would like to purchase one of them. The show is pre-selling. Thanks also for sharing this with anyone who might be interested.

– Rob