Artist Statement
I use a free and open style to explore the wonders of nature, particularly the beauty of flowers because: Flowers represent happiness; their beauty is energizing and comforting – peonies are among my favorites.
Painting flowers is an expression of my inward flower garden, a world where everything is possible, where colours are extra bright and where I am constantly exploring and simplifying designs to reveal the essence of flowers.
My artistic approach focuses on bright contrasting colours selecting a warm or cold dominance, while painting negative shapes against positive ones and ensuring that all shapes or spaces are of different size, colour and angle to obtain asymmetrical compositions.
My inspiration and creative processes come from my love of plants and nature’s cycles of the four seasons in Canada depicting some of the rich biodiversity surrounding us, which I experienced in early childhood and adolescence with my family during camping trips and winter outdoor activities, and which I continue to explore. I see each season as a journey of life cycles to learn from:
- Spring, a season of birth, blooms and breezes filled with soft fragrances luring hibernating wildlife and ourselves outside to rekindle with sunlight; a peaceful time, taming the elements, returning birds and singing frogs, seeding gardens, acclimatizing and preparing for summer.
- Summer, a season of gardening, listening to birds and watching frogs, looking at insects busy feeding on flowers. It is a time for fun, vacation, swimming, exploring, gardening, forest bathing; a time for replenishing, healing and getting ready for fall.
- Fall, a season of harvest, savoring flavors, sharing, hiking, a feast for the eyes on colours lacing the forest; a time to save and store food to get ready for winter.
- Winter, a season for outdoor sporting, sleeping or hibernating in our dens, dreaming of mystical creatures, imagining the next seasons or the next adventures on earth or to others galaxies; a time to rest and get ready for the spring.
Nature is everywhere, in all of us, and embracing everything. It is mysterious, beautiful and in a constant survival mode. It rules our environment, and, through climate change, also shows its displeasure on how we treat it. It is crucial in our daily activities to protect it for our survival and the next generations.
My paintings are an interpretation of nature’s forces, beauty and strength with the goal to inspire everyone to be gentle and tender with it, to feed our secret inner gardens, and cherish it as our best friend.
Most importantly, painting for me is the enjoyment of the process as a way of connecting with my own world, a meditation, and a peaceful, healing and calming moment in my life.