Look up, Love

24” x 12”, 2023, Acrylic on Canvas

An Artist's Statement

In my work, I often translate internal landscapes into tangible forms. With this piece, I wanted to subvert the typical viewpoint. We so often look down on flowers, appreciating their delicate nature. Here, I invite the viewer into the garden bed itself, to look up and be enveloped by the blossoms. From this perspective, the flowers become monumental, their stalks rising like pillars and their petals catching the light like beacons. The vibrant, saturated colors are a deliberate choice to express pure emotion—the incandescent orange of creativity, the deep reds of love, and the foundational strength of the earth below.

This piece also represents a personal exploration of a new, and admittedly controversial, artistic frontier. I recognize the fear many in the creative community feel about Generative AI, especially the valid concerns surrounding the unconsented reproduction of artists' work. It is a conversation I have been grappling with in my own practice. And so, I have a confession: while I typically build my worlds from pure intuition, the initial reference for this specific composition was an image generated by AI.

This process led me to meditate on the words of King Solomon: "There is nothing new under the sun." If all things are in a constant state of being created and destroyed, then that must include our very ideas of what art is and how it should be made. The digital image was, in itself, a think tank of countless unknown sources, a visual echo of what has come before. But it was just a fleeting whisper. The true creation happened here, on this canvas. The final piece—born from my choices, my hand, and my spirit—is the original I chose to bring into the world. It is an exploration of finding reverence, power, and untamed vitality, not just in nature, but in the evolving dialogue between human hands and new ideas.