Botanicals Black & White

Paintings on paper

Wild : 1

Arches cold press, 156 lb. watercolor paper, 40 x 26 inches

Ink (Sumi and metallic ink)

2021

My “memento mori.” Why is my work always about death? Isn’t everything?

Aren’t flowers and decay a time honored symbol of our short time in the world? I have a long list of flowers to paint:

Funeral Flowers for Floyd,

White Island flowers,

Flowers on fences in the aftermath of shootings and violence.

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Botanical: I – IV (black/white on gray paper)

Stonehenge gray, buffered paper, 90 lb., 30” x 22 inches

Inks

2021

Experimental. Chaos /Order. Large gray paper. I blocked out a few compositional items, main flower and stems, before randomly filling the pages. Layering inks, black and silver, with splatters and drips to create a chaos background. Two sets of three were done at the same time. Later, working with brush and black ink I rendered the details of the flower and stems.

I’ve worked exclusively in black and white since 2003 when I began creating a body of work about Black Lung/Coal Mining; botanicals, birds, swamps, trees, and landscapes in b/w. My oil paintings remain black and white. Botanicals in black and white is a continuing series.

During the pandemic I worked exclusively on paper revisiting water and ink media and materials stockpiled already on hand.