Carolyn Brady was a leading photorealist painter, who worked exclusively in watercolor and focused on three subjects: tabletop tableaux, gardens, and interiors—all of which included flowers. She once said, “I think that flowers are mediators between the human world and the spiritual world. I think that’s…why [people] like to see flowers, and have flowers.” Brady began her career as a textile designer, working in the studio of Jack Prince, alongside Audrey Flack and Joseph Raffael. She was first drawn to use watercolors on paper because this approach shared qualities with fabric-dying. Though her subjects often allude to, or include elements of, the natural world, Brady worked from photographs, projecting them onto the paper. She preferred to use a dry brush with her paints so that the pigment would be instantly absorbed.