Original Floral Paintings: Bold, Contemporary Flower Art
Flowers are the oldest subject in art — which is exactly why they're so easy to paint badly. Paint them politely and they disappear into the wallpaper. So I don't paint them politely. My florals are loud, modern, and unapologetically colourful, closer to my abstracts than to a soft botanical study. They're florals for people who don't usually like florals.
It goes back further than you'd think. Long before the mountains, I was drawing flowers in my mother's Ontario garden, and I've never fully stopped. What changed is how I see them. A bloom up close is pure design — radiating petals, hard shadow, colour against colour — and design is where I come from, after twenty years as an illustrator. I paint flowers the way I paint the Rockies: heightened colour, confident shapes, and a graphic, contemporary eye.
Built with brushes, not blended away
The florals are where my latex-acrylic works hardest. Petals get single committed strokes — one loaded angled brush, one pass, done — so each petal keeps the energy of the moment it was painted instead of being fussed to death. The backgrounds go dark and flat behind them, which is why the colour seems to come off the canvas. Stand close to Delightful and you can count the brushstrokes in every bloom; stand back and it's simply alive.
From single blooms to whole gardens
Some pieces are one statement flower filling the frame. Others, like Breezy Flowers or Graphic Flower Vision, are dense fields of colour that read almost as pattern. Cotton Candy Flowers is the sweetest of the current group — all of these are still in the studio and in the store. Others have already gone to their collectors: Red Striped Tulips, Nightfall Flowers, and Lilly Pond Flowers — bold waterside blooms in an abstract array of colour, and one I was sorry to see leave. Originals only exist once. On select pieces I offer signed and numbered canvas giclées in a limited edition of 95.
Colour that carries a room
A strong floral is the easiest way I know to bring life into a kitchen, dining room, bedroom or entry — and because mine lead with colour, decorators use them as palette anchors, pulling a wall colour or a cushion straight from the canvas. They also make a wedding or anniversary gift that no one else can duplicate. If there's a flower that means something in your house — a wedding bloom, a grandmother's garden — a commission can turn it into something permanent. Tell me the flower; I'll take it from there. — Martin