Flowers for Winter (to get us through) is a deeply personal series of abstract works inspired by the garden my husband and I nurture each year. In a time of profound stress, grief, and anxiety, related to familial illness and death; and the genocide, destruction, and environmental catastrophe in the greater world, this ongoing garden became a symbol of resilience and transformation. What if the flowers didn’t wilt? What if they continued to grow, mutate, and evolve, becoming more abstract, vivid, and strange with each season? This concept drives the imagery in my work, where the natural palette of magentas, violets, periwinkle blues, and greens mutates into neon pinks, lime greens, and hazy, atmospheric whites. The colors warp and blend in a pastel sfumato, creating a tension between nature’s familiar beauty and something more unsettling—a grotesque joy that emerges from the distortions of grief. This mutation is not just visual; it is emotional. The warmth in the paintings feels almost radioactive, at times comforting and at times overwhelming. The flowers become surreal forms, both growing and decaying in the same breath, a reflection of the paradoxes of love and loss. I want the viewer to feel this intensity—the simultaneous sense of decay and persistent beauty woven into an emotional entropy. Accompanying the paintings is a playlist of music that I curated while working on this series, which will play in the gallery during the exhibition. This music, rooted in the moodiness of Shoegaze (reflective of both comfort sought and impotence felt in the face of tragedies personal and global), explores themes of love, heartbreak, nature, and the cosmos. Through QR codes available around the gallery, visitors can experience the playlist for themselves, deepening the connection between sound, color, and emotion. In this way, the exhibition becomes a multi-sensory experience, inviting the viewer to engage with the warmth, distortion, and sometimes uncomfortable beauty that can emerge, even in the face of winter.