Flores de Humo, Original

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- 40 x 38 inches, framed
- Colored pencil on paper
- Playa Santa Teresa, CR

(2022) Call it the humidity on the lens of my camera, or the condensation from an airconditioned room in the sun, but these flowers, this crate represent the green of the jungle and the moisture of the air in Santa Teresa, before the dry season and the dust settles in. Collaborating with my extremely talented friend India Robinson from BLOSSOM BBY in Melbourne Australia, this concept has been traveling around the world with me.

India creates the most interesting floral arrangements I’ve ever come across, an artwork of the living object. Something about this piece felt more of a typical still life. But I wanted 'street' where there is opulence; the milk crate is not only India’s signature delivery/presentation method and the reason I was initially attracted to her work but also it grounds the idle beauty of this exotic arrangement of expensive plants. The reality of a flower arrangement often portrays an untouchable, sculpture-like adornment to a space, not saying my art isn't similar - I would even go so far as to say that’s the goal, but there has to be a relatability to my subjects, a milk crate, we’ve all sat on in desperate times, a little rough next to the pristine. Even still the perfection of these flowers felt too perfect, I know my style is hyper-real but when the subject appears so itself in the flesh, wouldn’t they cancel each other out? 

I kept on theme with the humidity that I lived in, on theme with the place that was my temporary home, I blurred this sculpture of Indias, and I played with a technique that is my new weapon. Feeling partially blind as I tried to distinguish the details on a fogged-out surface, I just let myself indulge in these colors. I now give you permission to do so, don’t try too hard to define it - its definition is in its lack of structure and its abundance of suggestions.