“As humans, we continually organize information into idealized subjects and patterns, sifting chaos into categories. The process helps us makes sense of all we observe which grounds us and gives us navigation through life. (Without our ability to categorize a world of information into groups, we would easily go insane!)

     As we shape information into idealized groups, we lose the peculiarities and eccentricities the unique individual in favor of the stereotype or archetype. We no longer see the unique individual as special but as a part of a predictable pattern.

     In the realm of plants, roses are perhaps the most idealized species of all. We are used to only seeing them in full bloom and vibrancy. We categorize them into recognizable symbols of love or friendship or whatever meaning we attach to their predictable shape.

     In reality, roses are living things subjected to the same forces of growth and aging as the rest of us. They reach a period of mature bloom, but they also droop and fade and go to seed for the next generation. They experience a wide range of sizes, textures, and colors, though many of the steps in their life process are unfamiliar to our knowledge of the “typical” rose.

     This series explores the unidealized forms of particular roses in real life. Like candid portraits, these paintings present each rose exactly where it is in its life process, independent of our idealized expectation of what it should look like.”