Be sure to see the show from August 5-29! 

Artist's Statement: With my mother’s maiden name, Flora Bloom, and my Nana Hortense Bloom, I was destined to love gardens! Thus, one of my favorite experiences is to spend summers painting watercolors in a flower shop. I’ve gathered so many paintings with memories of beautiful dazzling colorful florals, memorialized now with a permanence on paper when flowers are gone. A book of illustrated flowers is called a Florilegium in Latin, describing a gathering of flowers on voluminous pages in massive volumes that were first published in the 1700s. I’ve always been inspired by the beauty of flower books, large or small, Cahiers des Fleurs (“Flower Notebooks” in French), in addition to flower shops and painting in beautiful gardens like the gardens of East Hampton’s The Baker House where I am also teaching watercolor this summer.

These watercolors express the pleasures of observing the personalities of flowers and the relationships between them when gathered in arrangements through the artistry of florists. With gesture, texture, color, aura, form and space, the flower emerges on paper…. It’s thrilling to get the expression just so. Each painting has a story of what inspired me and what was challenging to capture, with thanks to my many summers at the Sag Harbor Florist.

My exhibition of gathered flowers is an ode to inspirations from the grandiose Florilegia or the more intimate Cahiers des Fleurs from sketches to masterful finishes, a tribute so fitting for an art show of flowers in a library art gallery.