Loud spring 13

"Loud spring" is a series of oil paintings built around the parrot tulip at full bloom — its characteristically fringed and ruffled petals rendered in thick impasto palette knife work, the paint itself as expressive as the color it carries. Acid lime striped through deep cobalt. Burnt sienna bleeding into electric violet. Toxic pink slashed with charcoal. These are not colors found in nature. They are colors nature was working toward and never quite reached.

Behind and between the flowers the background abandons description entirely, erupting in bold geometric fields and gestural sweeps of pure non-naturalistic color that echo and amplify the tulip palette without pretending to be sky or wall or garden. Harsh direct sunshine strikes from a sharp angle — uncompromising and graphic, the shadow shapes falling across blooms and abstract background alike, becoming compositional elements as compelling as the flowers that cast them.