With this piece, I was definitely inspired by renaissance floral still-life paintings. Even though I was literally just taking pictures of flowers, I still wanted it to have a dark, melancholic mood to it, which seems to be my style. I had recently seen a few Pre-Raphaelite and Renaissance exhibitions. Prior to these exhibitions I had always been in complete awe of their talents, in seemingly all mediums! But then, upon learning more about them, it humanised them more for me and I realised that it is wrong to glorify their work, and in turn glorify them. In most cases, they were extremely privileged and wealthy. They didn’t have to work; they had all the money they needed to live a comfortable life and creating was their way to spend their time. And I thought, I would love to have that time and lack of responsibility, so I could completely focus on honing my craft too. So, in a way, it feels kind of relevant to this weird, frozen state we seem to be in at the moment (during the 2020 pandemic). I chose to leave one white flower in the middle as I wanted to represent this feeling of loneliness a lot of people will be feeling right now. If you were to approach the picture with your eyes squinted a bit, it would look like the only subject of the image, completely alone. But when you get to see the whole picture, you can see the ‘black background’ is actually filled with other leaves and flowers. While my pictures tend to look a little gloomy, I feel like there is enough of that right now, and I wanted to put a (very small) positive message within the image. While a lot of people are feeling alone right now, we are probably more together than we have ever been. And in feeling that loneliness, you’ll never be alone.
2020