bloom

Every obsession begins somewhere. Before the cowboy was repainted and before the nude reclaimed herself, there were flowers. Not as decoration. As cover. As the first place a painter hides what he cannot yet say out loud.

The floral tradition has always been considered safe. Domestic. Decorative. A still life asks nothing of the viewer and nothing of the painter — or so the record insists. Dutch masters filled rooms with blooms because flowers were permitted where figures were not. The church, the patron, the proper household — all of them comfortable with petals. None of them looked closely enough.

These are not still lifes. Look closer. The female form was always in there — tucked inside a tulip, suggested in the curve of a bloom, present in every petal that was never quite botanical enough to be accidental. The florals were the beginning of both arguments that would follow: that beauty is not a passive gift, that it does not wither on command, and that its forms are not ranked.

Bloom does not reach backward. It does not claim the floral tradition knew what it was doing. It claims something more specific — that this studio, in this series, looked at flowers and found a woman. That the botanical was always concealing something. That the concealment was the point. The woman in the flowers preceded the woman in the painting. Bloom was always the first argument.

The garden came first. The argument came with it. The most honest things a painter makes are sometimes the ones he builds a garden around to protect them. It just took two more series to say it in paint more clearly.

v.01. 2026. kansas studio. first formal manifesto iteration.