Flowers Are Living Art

Flowers are living art.  They have been the subject of endless human endeavors to capture their glory, with paint, pen or photography…and now 3-D printers. As a flower farmer, I find these attempts at matching nature’s glory with even the most talented human effort or the highest technology all but futile.

I am sorry Van Gogh, I am sorry Matisse and I am sorry Ansel Adams, you can’t improve upon perfection.  Perhaps this is why people continually try to capture the essence of flowers, whether on Instagram or in another medium, is it a human’s natural desire to reach for the unreachable, to strive to the unobtainable?

Of course, to give artists a bit of credit, a piece of art can create an emotion based composition and technique, as Edward Weston said,

“This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock” 

Georgia O'Keeffe's Calla Lily (Our real-life Callas are on their way!)

For many, going back centuries, I think the motivation maybe just to “share” the purity and single mindedness of flowers.  As technology has improved and become more wide spread, it is wonderful that we can all share our images of flowers…without being Georgia O’Keeffe.

 But why not take out the middle man?

Buy some flowers, pick some flowers, experience flowers first hand and don’t depend on someone else to snap a picture for you.  You can’t smell an image, you can’t touch the soft petals of a painting and you can’t watch as a still life grows and dances in the vase the way tulips do.

Put down your brush, put down your camera…and pick up flowers!