When I started this painting, I wasn’t interested in arranging a polite bouquet. I wanted to see what would happen if light itself tried to take the shape of flowers. The first marks were loose, almost unruly—broad strokes of yellow, ochre, and warm citrus tones pushed across a cool gray ground with palette knives and wedges. I was chasing a sensation more than a subject: the way a burst of color can suddenly change the temperature of a room.
As the layers built, the bouquet began to assert itself—not as carefully drawn petals, but as clusters of energy. The flowers became eruptions of gold and amber, suggested through texture, broken edges, and quick, gestural marks. Against the soft greys and muted blues of the background, they felt like sunlight arguing with overcast weather. Dark lines and charcoal-like sweeps hinted at stems and structure, just enough to keep the whole thing from flying apart.
The lower part of the painting—the vase and those magenta and violet passages—became a sort of grounding note. I let the paint drip and run there on purpose. It was my way of acknowledging gravity, the pull of time and weight, beneath all that wild, blooming color. The drips and streaks keep the piece honest; they remind me that beauty is never entirely tidy.
On a deeper level, “Wild Bouquet in Yellow” marks a point where my love of abstraction and my draw toward florals finally met in the middle. I wasn’t trying to paint a recognizable still life. I was trying to capture the fleeting vitality of flowers—their brief, blazing existence—through motion, color, and texture. This piece is less about what a bouquet looks like and more about how it feels when something in you suddenly opens up, fills with light, and refuses to stay quiet.
- Collections: Abstract Florals