39x29
Oil on Linen
White Oak flush frame

In this painting, my daughter is holding an impossibly large bundle of daffodils. The flowers are exploding out around her head and small body. She stands in a bare, unsettled landscape.

Where did this image come from? And why does it feel urgent now?

Edvard Munch wrote about feeling overwhelmed by the sound and speed of modern life, pausing on a walk, sensing an infinite scream passing through nature. I had felt a similar intense but nebulous feeling while working on this painting.

The daffodils have come to represent the beauty that could exist. My daughter doesn't know the world yet. She's still protected. She sees beauty and gathers it unabashedly, more than she can hold.

What might have become a sweet painting about a child holding flowers developed layers during the year I worked on it. The child and the flowers are still beautiful, but woven in is a scream about the world she will eventually have to enter. An anger toward the hostilities she may one day face. And a fear that the flowers she gathers today may become harder to find.