Flower Power

Given that it is a new year, why not start it off with something delightful.

Flowers fit that bill perfectly. I’m obsessed with flowers: in my home, multiple bouquets are generally scattered about, I’m seemingly unable to pick upholstery fabric without selecting a floral chintz or needlepoint, and of course the garden. But it is in my studio that florals frequently make their strongest appearance. I’m drawn to the seeming disharmony between  the floral and the fine arts. I delight in challenging the dismissal of  floral and vegetal motifs to the decorative arts .

I’m also interested in  refuting the gendering of the floral, this feminizing of floral motifs leads to an insidious  misogynistic homophobic  mindset.  One I experience externally by society at large and  more disturbingly, internally- I am often embarrassed by my affection for the “feminine”, this post a testament to that discomfort.  It frequently seems serious art cannot be floral or possess prettiness, and yet I am very serious about my work and floral patterns and motifs bud abundantly-it is in this fact, that my work is perhaps most “queer”.  It is the incongruity  between  the floral prettiness of my work and some of its  disquieting aspects that I am drawn to in the first place.  My desire is to challenge this bias, both externally and internally.

My latest painting, a large unbound “tapestry”canvas embodies this gendered split. It is of a repentant, tearful Herakles, far removed from the bravado chest thumping posture in which he is usually depicted. This is of the post mad Herakles, after the wife slaying, after the brutal slaying of his own children, the broken man seeking redemption , rived with grief. Ostensibly the Twelve Labors were to be his redemption, but tradition maintains that  the modest hellebore is what cured his madness.

Again the flower.

 

 

 

 The other day I approached a restroom at a restaurant and encountered this very gendered placard- it made me chuckle as the establishment was earnestly trying to be progressive yet did so in a rather gendered binary way.

 

If I were choose I would certainly choose the floral.

 

That aside, this  latest tapestry/painting is part of consistent floral motif throughout my Fairyland body of work (and I imagine will continue for quite some time) and until Fairyland is installed I will be snipping and sewing away on many elements, but perhaps most especially, flowers.

Of the gendering of “women’s work”, be it embroidery, stitchery, floral motifs etc, The Subversive Stitch is a wonderful examination.

 

 

My supplies shelves are crammed with vintage floral patterns from my boyhood-essentially the patterns I was denied as a little gay boy.

But I’ve made up for lost time. With that, happy 2019!