Description
You’ve Got Everything It Takes is a 20×24″ mixed media contemporary floral painting on canvas panel created during my Artist in Residency program at The Art Center in Dover, New Hampshire.
This painting belongs within the residency body of work, Attending To Light, where I worked with light as a source of wonder and awe.
Because of my intuitive process, attention to color and form, and my use of mixed media, the bouquet does not simply sit in light ~ it appears to generate light.
Contemporary Floral Painting Built Through Layering
In this contemporary floral painting, the bouquet developed through an early stage of collage. I assembled a field of flowers using the tissue papers that I painted during the study phase of the residency.
As a result, the flowers carry visual history within them. Earlier gestures remain present beneath later marks. Color, collage, and marks move together so the petals feel constructed and present rather than simply described.
All the while, the luminous hues of yellow, magenta, and warm orange move through the bouquet like bursts of energy to create vitality and movement across the surface.
You’ve Got Everything It Takes has everything it takes. It was built through layering of color, media, and mark.
Contemporary Floral Painting Balances Abstraction and Form
This contemporary floral painting holds abstraction and recognizable form at the same time.
On the left side of the painting a glowing abstraction opens the space with atmospheric blues, layered veils of color, and subtle grid marks to create depth. The space feels expansive and slightly undefined, which invites you in and gives the eye room to wander.
On the right side, the green vessel gathers the bouquet with layers of color and marks that allow the vessel to absorb and release light, so it feels present. Because it is a more defined form, the eye can settle there.
Below the bouquet, a deep horizontal field introduces a calm balance. The darker ground stabilizes the painting and allows the luminous flowers above to feel even more radiant.
The abstraction invites imagination and wonder, and the form provides confidence and reassurance ~ the painting offers both freedom and steadiness at the same time.
You’ve Got Everything It Takes balances abstraction and form which is why it reads less like a still life and more like an emotional environment.
Composition Offers Assurance
The composition creates more than a visual arrangement; it establishes an emotionally steady environment.
The vessel stands steady and upright ~ it feels grounded and capable of holding what it carries. This creates a feeling of confidence and assurance. There is a feeling of spaciousness and mystery that inspires imagination, discovery and possibilities.
Painting Details
Title: You’ve Got Everything It Takes
Series: Residency, Attending To Light
Medium: Acrylic mixed media
Substrate: canvas panel
Size: 20 x 24 inches
