Monthly Theme: The Art of Flowers!

For this month, I wanted to combine two of my favorite things (not sugar and spice and everything nice – though those are also high on my list of desires) - flowers and artwork.

Since the beginning of time, artists have tried to capture the undeniable beauty of nature through sketching, carving, painting, sculpting, etching, and photographing. So, flowers, trees, landscapes, bodies of water, and skies are a common theme in the art world. Like an artist with a paint brush, gardeners with their trowels create works of art within their own flower gardens.

There are so many phenomenal examples to choose from in the world of art, but I’ll keep it down to a handful. Let’s start with the above picture “Water Lilies, Green Harmony” by the one and only Claude Monet. This is just one of 250 paintings of water lilies that Monet created. This picture was done between 1914-1917 after Monet was a commercial success and able to express himself freely and experiment with motifs, colors, and sizes of his choosing. While in France, my daughter and I were fortunate enough to visit Monet’s house in Giverny and see for ourselves his paintings and his pond with water lilies where he once painted. It is said that he planted the flowers before he painted the flowers. Monet has been quoted saying, “My finest masterpiece is my garden.”

We can’t have a discussion about paintings of flowers without highlighting the works by Georgia O’Keeffe. O’Keeffe is famous for her vibrantly colored and over-sized flowers. Like Monet, O’Keeffe was an avid gardener and frequented local NYC florists for samples of the flowers she wanted to paint, but didn’t grow in the city. O'Keeffe said, “I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.”

She wanted the viewers to really look at the delicate structure and finite details of the pedals and pistils, which is why she painted these huge close-up views of flowers. It is almost as if the brightness and size of the flower forces the viewer to observe it. O’Keeffe’s works have so much more energy and passion than the traditional still life drawing of a flower.

In my kitchen dining area, I have a print of O’Keeffe’s “Light Iris.” It makes my heart smile when I pass through the room and isn’t that what art should do – move us to emotion?

Vase with Poppies Flowers, 1886 by Vincent van Gogh

Those who know me know that my favorite artist of the great masters is Vincent van Gogh. As you enter my house, my hallway is filled with prints of his paintings including the one pictured above “Vase with Poppies Flowers.” Of course, he painted people and landscapes too using his signature brushstrokes, but his flowers are my personal favorites.

Van Gogh was a lover of nature and obsessed with attempting to capture its grandeur and beauty. He once said, “If one loves nature, one finds beauty everywhere.” In my humble opinion, he succeeded overwhelmingly in capturing nature’s beauty through his artwork. Who hasn’t stared at his picture “Starry Night” from 1889 and felt transfixed and mesmerized by its swirling skies?

He truly enjoyed painting sunflowers. In fact, he wanted to be known as the painter of sunflowers. Maybe it was because his favorite color was yellow or the unique hardy and coarse structure of a sunflower. At his funeral, friends brought bouquets of sunflowers to remember and honor him.

Since the advent of photography, photographers have been taking pictures of flowers. I’d be admis not to recognize the work of Karl Blossfeldt, Anna Atkins, and Charles Jones. However, for this conversation I wanted to flash forward to 2023 and acknowledge the new and fresh work of Debora Lombardi.

Lombardi is a photographer and Italian designer who uses ultraviolet (UV) light to reveal the wide range of colors normally invisible to the human eye. Now we can see what bees and other insects see in nature.

She uses intense UV lights to illuminate the flowers with a procedure called ultraviolet-induced visible fluorescence. Just when you thought a flower couldn’t be even more beautiful, Lombardi proved us wrong. Lombardi said, “I aim to ease uncertainty by rendering an invisible world of science visible through photographic power. “

I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers, 2023, by Yayoi Kusama

Last, I’d like to highlight the works of Yayoi Kusama. Most know Kusama for her bold repetitive polka dots. However, Kusama is much for than dots. She paints, draws, writes poetry, makes sculptures, films, fashion, installations, and performance art. For this blog, I wanted to feature her oversized sculptures of pop art flowers (as seen above).

Kusama was born in 1929 in Japan and moved to the US in 1957. I specifically like that she entitled this sculpture, “I spend each day embracing flowers.” I’m not sure if that is true, but I’m sure she like so many other artists are inspired by flowers and nature.

In fact, Kusama along with fellow artist Kiki Smith created giant murals inside Grand Central Madison train terminal, some of which are painted with fun, child-like colorful flowers

Well, I could go on and on indefinitely on a subject so near and dear to my heart, but for now I thank you for joining me on this walk through the art of flowers!