Flowers have been an integral part of my life and as a result my choice of subject matter and a recurring theme in my work. Even after exploring other subject matter such as landscapes, and portraiture I always returned to flowers, which are a constant in my life, and a continuous choice of subject to paint.

I have memories of my grandmother coming to visit, and if my Mom was busy she (a fanatical gardener) would head out into the garden with her secateurs and prune and snip the roses so they were always flowering. A particular ghoulish pleasure of hers was to murder the stink bugs that often attempted to infest the roses by snipping them in half with her secateurs bringing a rather grizzly demise to their rose feeding frenzy.

It was my horticulturist fathers job to prune the roses and every June/July he would begin the task of cutting back the roses for the winter, he even experimented with grafting roses. Grafting is a technique that joins two plants into one. In general, a wound is created on one of the plants, and the other is inserted into that wound so each plant’s tissues can grow together. He would use one plant as root stock and sometimes there would be two rose types growing from one bush. I was always excited to see what would start blooming come spring. It was always such an exciting and strongly scented surprise as the roses opened and released their pungent smell. My grandmother, a rose purest at heart would snort and refer to him as a horticultural Frankenstein!

Happy Memories!

Thick impasto style paint applied with a palette knife creating depth and texture.