Painting the Roses Red (New American F(L)AG)

Oil on canvas, and New and Recycled hand-painted silk flowers on board.

Generally speaking, flowers in fine art raise more questions than they answer. Though their visual appeal is straightforward, the interpretation of their bewildering array of meaning is complicated, and often contradictory. The flower can function as a vehicle for contemplating concepts of sex, decay, gender politics, our environment, decadence, ceremony, and the mutability of life, love and death.

I used primarily recycled/rescued white silk flowers with a history of their own to build an iconic arrangement upon which the viewer can cast their own interpretations. However I do not deny my own complex allusion to art history in this piece.