Floral

In paintings and photographs from our gallery exhibition, these artists portray flowers with minimalism and expressionism — from decoration to realism.

The flowers in Krause’s Blossom and California Native are rough combinations of pencil outline, watercolor, and white paper. Overlapping translucent washes and strokes are multiple exposures of her process: minimalism pursuing the ephemeral.

Agapanthus dive over the pond in Patricia Doyle's Reflections, Garden Pool. Her zig-zagging strokes animate the inflorescences into fantastical paint and flower hybrids.

Susan Petty's After A Rain: Pear Blossoms is all about actions outside the canvases. The three panels allude to time; situated between the blossoms and the fruit, we see Petty's gestures of speckled paint and petals that appear to be forever falling.

Meg Torbert's hibiscuses are artifacts of painting over painting. They encapsulate time and memory, portraying a reality that expands far beyond still life.

Bill Dewey's Pink Rose presents beauty through intimacy and imperfections. Photographed at close range, he captures tiny water droplets on the petals, whose upper edges overlap like mountain ridges. A torn petal, just beyond the shallow depth of focus, heightens the elegance with fragility.

These floral paintings by Anne Ward are visual chronicles of spring in her garden.

Shadows and light in May Afternoon mark the time of day. A chair plays surrogate for Anne as the blooms lean into their portrait.

Ward magnifies the pink rose at the center of May Bloom. Adorning it with a garland of the surrounding stems and leaves, she ordains it an icon for May.