Confinement Gardens Studio Interview

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 My ongoing Confinement Gardens series, developed during the Covid 19 pandemic last year. In March 2020, as the virus was surging in New York, and strict lockdown measures were in place, I sought relief from these restrictions by walking through the city’s public parks and gardens. Witnessing the powerful emergence of waves of flowers during the spring blooming, I felt so hopeful despite the pandemic and the political situation we were in. Though I am an abstract painter, impressions of my garden walks emerged in my usually nonfigurative compositions, and I began combining floral and leaf forms with wholly abstract linear patterns.

I am fully aware of the deteriorating natural environment, and the artifice of cultivated gardens, an "unnatural" space where plants are protected, somewhat like our zoos in which the last examples of their species survive. However, during this time, I was nonetheless seeking a vision of hope, and celebrated nature’s ongoing luxuriant beauty in these lush green paintings punctuated with colorful notes of imagined flowers.