I decided to do this series of florals as it is something I rarely paint. These florals are different from any I have painted before and were a real joy to do.
“Wild Bouquet with Violet Vase” began not as a careful arrangement, but as a burst of energy. I walked into the studio with the sense of a bouquet that refused to behave—colorful, unruly, reaching in every direction. Instead of planning out stems and petals, I started with movement: bold swipes of color, layered textures, and the grounded presence of that deep violet form anchoring the chaos like a vase that’s just barely containing it all.
Working with palette knives and wedges, I pushed the paint into ridges, scrapes, and drips, letting each mark feel a little bit wild. The bouquet isn’t rendered in a traditional way; it’s suggested through collisions of yellow, orange, pink, and whatever hues demanded to be there. The vase itself became more than an object—it’s a quiet weight at the bottom of the composition, a solid note under all the improvisation above it.
As the painting developed, it became less about “a vase with flowers” and more about the personality of a bouquet that won’t sit still. Some areas stack thick, like dense clusters of blooms, while others thin out and trail off, like stems catching light at the edge of vision. I followed the rhythm rather than a reference, listening for where the painting wanted the next burst of color, the next drip, the next scrape back to an earlier layer.
"Wild Bouquet in Gray Light" began as a study in contrast between wild color and quiet atmosphere, between movement and stillness. I came to the canvas not to paint a vase of flowers, but to explore what happens when a burst of floral energy lives inside a softened, muted field of gray. The first gestures were loose and improvisational: sweeps of color, knife marks, and layered textures moving across a calm, atmospheric ground.
I didn't paint "Wild Bouquet in Gray Light" to offer a perfect floral arrangement. I painted it to hold the feeling of color pushing against quiet, of life insisting on being seen even under muted skies. If you sense motion, weather, or emotion in the way the bouquet sits inside that gray field, that's the conversation I hoped to open. My role was to listen, layer by layer, and let this restless, luminous bouquet find its own way into the light.
