This was my first pastel piece where I began to explore my fascination with flowers. I’d seen Georgia O’Keefe’s amazing flower pieces for the first time in Santa Fe. They blew me away — the colors, the “landscape.” Her paintings introduced me to the idea that within the petals of a flower exists an entire world, if only that we would pay attention.
The idea for this piece came from a photo I’d taken of a black-eyed susan in my garden. I’d planted a black-eyed susan into the garden some months before. The photo had captured the swirls of color, out of focus, in the background. The flower itself was slightly turned away, as if I could capture both sides of the flower at the same time.
There are no pure colors in this image. Yellows give way to russets and greens; greens give way to gray; browns become pitch. It is as if the flower needs to show us just how we are always in the process of changing.
