Petals of Nostalgia:

Timeless memories captured in a floral bouquet.

There’s something quietly powerful about a bouquet of flowers—ephemeral as the petals wither and the flowers die all while evoking memories.

Is it the scent that brings us back to that lilac tree in our childhood home? Are the colours in that rose reminiscent of a special occasion dress? Do the flowers remind us of a loved one long gone?

When those blooms are captured on canvas, they become something else entirely: timeless.

A painted bouquet does more than preserve beauty—it evokes and preserves a sense of nostalgia well beyond the moment of its creation.

Flowers are memory keepers.

Remember the last time you saw a still life painting, a vase spilling over with peonies or wildflowers, immortalized with brushstrokes? Something stirs as you examine the painted floral. It’s not just the image you’re seeing—it’s a memory being gently unlocked.

Maybe it's the scent of your grandmother’s garden in spring. My nonna had huge dahlias all along her front porch. I cannot see a dahlia without thinking of her.

To this day, I associate petunias with my mom who lined her flower beds with pink or variegated petunias.

Or maybe it’s the wrist corsage clutched nervously on a prom date. Or the bouquets brought to the hospital room after the birth of a baby.

Flowers, by their very nature, mark life's moments—births, apologies, celebrations, farewells. Why else do we press them between the pages of books? 

Artists understand the power of painting florals.

For instance, the Impressionists, with their looser styles, focused less on precision and more on mood—on the feeling a flower stirs, rather than its exact form.

Similarly, the flowers I painted are less about accuracy and more about creating that feeling of elusiveness flowers evoke – the delicate ruffles, the tender buds, all alluding to the transitory nature of flowers. 

To hang a floral painting on a wall is to invite the past into the present.

Any art becomes a visual poem that reminds us of what we felt, where we were, or who we loved. But in a world increasingly digitized, there's a particular tenderness or significance in something so analog—a floral painting made by hand, of nature itself, frozen in time.

Examples of past floral paintings: A Crown of Flowers for Spring, Summer is in the Carnation Can. (not available), Lucite florals(not available).

So the next time you pass by a floral still life in a gallery or in someone’s home, pause for a moment. Because somewhere in that bouquet on canvas lies a petal-pressed fragment of your own story, waiting to bloom again. Allow yourself a few quiet moments to discover that special story.