I make paintings that explore intergenerational love: the kind as my grandmother and mother walked me through our gardens, naming each flower: Larkspur, Foxglove, Columbine, Bleeding Hearts. The names said aloud in place of “I love you.”  Vases stood indoors against toile-covered walls and furniture. When we sold our family home, I found a bolt of that toile in my mother’s closet.  Now fragments appear in my floral paintings holding what is gone and carry the memory forward.

My process begins small: a sheet torn from a lined notepad, with a quote of life wisdom at the bottom.  Sometimes the quote shapes the composition. On these nonarchival, fragile papers I paint in watercolor and gouache, adding a fragment of family toile or found paper or string.

From these small paintings I build larger ones in gouache and pastel.  I tea-stain the paper first, because tea is a plant and what generations of my family have poured for each other. Onto the stained surface I paint the blue and red ruled lines of the notebook page, a reminder of fragility.  Then I add the flower whether in its fullness, enlarged fragment or falling apart at the end of its life.  I let its energy break past the frame. Color explodes.
There is a quiet conversation in my process between the precious and the perishable; the heirloom and a bloom that will not last the week, between what I have been given all the love in between.