Disrupted Florals

I started painting flowers because they felt safe. Everyone loves a pretty flower. They gave me room to work with color, to mix, to experiment, to learn without feeling exposed. Florals were an easy entry point. Agreeable. Easy to live with.

As my work evolved, that safety began to feel limiting.

Portraits became the place where I found my voice. Faces allowed space for emotions I didn’t yet have words for. They carried grief, anger, complexity, and release. Painting faces became a way of owning what I felt instead of hiding it.

Looking back, the early florals were safe because they avoided vulnerability. They were pleasant on the surface. Decorative. They didn’t ask much of the viewer, and they didn’t ask much of me. They functioned as a mask. A way to keep chaos out of the frame.

This series of florals is different.

These are not safe flowers. They are not meant to be pretty or comforting. They are built through interruption. Layers of media overlap, collide, and block one another. Thoughts don’t resolve. Parts feel broken, incomplete, or pushed out of alignment. The surface reflects disruption instead of harmony.

This work exists inside a moment that feels fractured and contradictory. It comes from carrying reactions that don’t neatly process and won’t quietly settle. It lives in a world that presents softness while operating through division, force, and pressure.

These florals do not return to safety. They reject it.

They sit in discomfort. They hold disruption. They reflect what it feels like to live without clean answers, with layered thoughts, broken rhythms, and unresolved tension.

This is the feeling, without trying to explain it away.

The choice to keep these works small is intentional. At 5×7, they echo how disruption is often minimized, dismissed, or expected to stay contained.

Ten together push back against that expectation. This series reflects a moment where pressure comes from above, but resistance shows up in accumulation, repeated acts, repeated voices, repeated refusal to accept contradiction as normal.