Inspiration for this painting came from one of the many moments when I stopped before throwing a flower away. I had been closely observing this calla lily as it began to die, noting how its form collapsed and how the colors shifted over time.This was the final moment of my observation, and I became very aware that I was holding something that I had once seen full of life, now slowly disappearing. That tension became the foundation of this piece.
Lately, I have been in a very experimental place with my work, allowing more underpainting to remain visible and pushing myself away from a fully refined surface. I focused heavily on texture, edge relationships, and allowing gesture to stay visible, especially within my hand itself. My hand became the most abstracted and least refined part of the painting because when I observe flowers closely, they become the only thing I really see. Everything else starts to fall away. In contrast, the most refined parts of the calla lily are the areas that are the most wilted. Those sections felt the most important for me to fully understand and capture because they held the strongest evidence of time.
