I am a lousy gardener but an intentional flower painter. I like the motif because it gives me multiple excuses to experiment with color. And more recently, I’ve realized how the flower, in all its power, is also one heck of a feminist statement.

On the one hand, historically, women were long excluded from making art, only allowed certain motifs or activities, like embroidery, collage and, of course, the flower. So I’ve taken those restrictions to heart and am meanwhile making increasingly voluble flower paintings, a few angry flowers, and maybe just maybe, feminist flowers. The idea is to create images that explore female empowerment through one of femininity’s supposedly most benign icons.

Then there’s the whole decorative trope. Flowers in art are sometimes dismissed as decorative, a big taboo in art for over a century, especially when abstraction came online. Well, it turns out that taboo came from a few art critics back then and has held sway, really, until quite recently. Movements like Pattern and Decoration in the 1970-80s were one of the first more cohesive push-backs. There are others, including various currently active women painters loosely grouped under the Neo-Rococo movement, who are challenging the decorative critique.

One more thing, I too like flowers for all the comfort and reassurance they offer. So, besides all these meta interests of mine, in every single floral motif I paint, I like the possibility that they might also express a feel-good vibe, as in beauty or warmth or inspiration. I am better at building up than tearing down, although I think both are important in society and art. If my paintings are doing both a bit at once, I’m happy with that outcome.