Artist Statement
My twelve series works portray flowers and fruit that mirror the prints of John James Audubon. However, at a closer glance, the paintings are of cheap, fake flowers and fruit boasting price tags and sale stickers. The parallel between the beautiful, natural flowers and the hideous fake flowers is meant to convey the meaning of plasticity. The pieces compel viewers to contemplate plasticity and fakeness in our world and within themselves. There is so much pressure in our society for each of us to fit into certain parameters that we often allow ourselves to become as fake and plastic as Dollar Store flowers. There has been a disintegration of genuine feeling, emotion, and personality in our culture. This lack of sincerity needs to be remedied in order to solve the problems in our society. My hope is that this message can be conveyed through my series paintings. Each of my series pieces is painted in an extremely realistic style. The parts of the flowers and fruit are very accurately shown through value, with darks and lights to pull forward some areas of the flowers and push back others. This technique gives depth to the painting and allows the flowers to have a more realistic appearance. In addition, each painting displays colors very true to the colors of the cheap fake flowers. Bubblegum pinks, neon greens, and abnormally bright yellows exhibit the unnatural qualities of the fake objects. In Pink Daisy and Blue Rose, these color choices are exceptionally noticeable. The final layer of each painting conveys the plasticity even more than the other aspects. The final coat of paint is a high-gloss medium that gives the flowers and fruit an unnatural shine. The glossy paint on the flower stems and fruit also makes the objects have a more rounded, life-like appearance. For example, Lemons has multiple coats of gloss medium to enhance this effect. In order to liken my paintings to Audubon’s prints, inserts showing more detailed parts of the subject are shown in some of the paintings. Additionally, “scientific notes” about each flower or piece of fruit are painted into the background. These aspects of the paintings more accurately show the comparison to Audubon’s works, exhibiting the main idea of my series.