manifesto: 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.

These are not just 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 beauty is not a passive gift, that it does not wither on command, and that the most honest things a painter makes are sometimes the ones he builds a garden around to protect them.