About Flowers for the People

Are not flowers the stars of the earth? – Elon Foster

I started painting these intimate little flower pieces soon after we were first asked to shelter in place back in March 2020.  A friend of mine had lost her partner suddenly, and I wanted to gift her something to commemorate his life and their love.  I painted her the California Poppy, and the first of the flower portraits came to light. People started asking me to paint flowers as gifts for people who had lost their loved ones, and then for family members and friends that were having a hard time, needing comfort, nourishment, encouragement, and love.  And so this project, Flowers for the People, was born.

Flowers, which are buffeted by storms and fly on the wind, spread through the migration of monarch and swallow, have lessons to teach us about finding our roots right where we are, in wild and tumultuous conditions, such as these... global pandemic... economic and political insecurity... racial inequity and injustice. The manicured lives and everyday activities that we’ve partaken of for years, even decades, are becoming pale remnants of what they once were-- and at the same time, in the crumbling and dissolution of it all, there is an opportunity for creativity and re-enchantment unlike anything that we have experienced before.

In these times, the flowers have wisdom to share with us, in the quiet recesses of our psyches and the deep hollows of our bodies. They call us home again, singing to us in the forgotten wholeness of our dreams, anchoring those things that have become displaced and disjointed in the chaos, and reminding us of the power of life and the presence of magic.

There are over four million flowers in the world, and I plan to paint as many of them in my life as I possibly can. This is my way of getting to know them, of stopping and really taking the time to look at each one.  The Indian philosopher Krishnamurti wrote that "to pay attention means we care, which means we really love.” If this is so, if love is the art of sharing deep presence with one another, then this project is about how we can fall in love with the natural world again, and create a portal for the natural world to share it’s love and grace with us, in a modern, authentic way.

Who doesn’t need the gift of a flower, a surge of color and beauty, especially in dark times? 

Each painting can be framed in a handmade frame of your choosing, ready to hang on your wall, and comes with a prose-poem-spell written by my friend and collaborator, Rebecca Riyana Sang. Riyana is an herbalist and contemporary witch, and her poems draw from the magical folklore and the medicinal properties of the specific plant, as well as her own witchy intuitive insights of the flower. 

To commission an original flower please use this form….