Flowersa semi-abstract painting of flowers

Flowers are incredibly beautiful, and if painted well can make stunning paintings. Realistic representations of flowers in the forms of paintings can come close to being able to match the physical beauty of the subject but will always fall a little short. The Dutch still-life painters of the seventeenth century were the greatest at depicting the beauty (and decay) of flowers.

The problem is as a viewer of a great realistic flower painting we are not looking at flowers but the artist’s ability to paint realistically. Their virtuosity all too often transfixes us, and we fail to see the flowers.

So with this in mind, I have set about to go beyond the limitations of realism and create a semi-abstract view of a large bunch of flowers. In homage to the Dutch flower painters of the seventeenth century, I have used a black background to make the flowers stand out.

This work isn’t totally abstract like most of my other work. I felt it was beyond my ability to take the abstract quotient to the maximum and retain a quality of beauty that could be comparable to what nature can offer.

I am still very proud of this work and believe it is far superior in terms of conveying the beauty of flowers to any realistic paintings of flowers – and that includes the Dutch flower painters.

Bert Ernie