KB

I have always painted the occasional flower - usually a picture to remind me of gifts that have arrived over the years. I started painting flowers seriously during the lockdowns of 2020. There was little opportunity to get out into the countryside and this was the only natural thing I could work with. As the months went on this morphed into painting dead flowers as I seemed to be making a collection of them. Sometimes the most exciting part of the presented image is an accidental shadow formed by the sun streaking through a window or occasionally at night two lots of shadows caused by dual light sources positioned so that I can see the colours properly. My fascination with dead flowers reached its apogee in the basement of the Chicago Museum of Art in spring 2025 when I found a small drawing by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfield done in 1817 of “A branch with shrivelled leaves”