Flower Power! AKA Spring is Here in NYC!

Joanne Artman Gallery
Mar 26, 2017 11:54PM

It is spring. We know because the snow is melting and the streets smell like fresh rain. New buds are showing on the trees and green stalks are bursting through the thawing ground. It feels like the whole city is taking a much needed deep breath before we are set upon the hazy heat of summer. We can’t help but think at this time of the most iconic emblem of the season - the flower.

America Martin
Ants and Flowers
Joanne Artman Gallery

The image of the flower has been used as a manifold symbol throughout history. In fact, flowers have been considered so evocative that a flower dictionary was published in 1819 in Paris, France, titled Le Language de Fleurs. By the Victorian Era, floral design had become a recognized form of artistic expression. Meanings were both established as well as fabricated upon both special occasions as well as for everyday greetings. Even today we associate red roses with true love, and a bouquet of yellow roses with friendship.

America Martin
Knife, Cheese & Paradise Flowers
Joanne Artman Gallery

We have already dipped into the language of flowers in one of our earlier posts in relation to the types of symbols and hidden meanings in historical works of art. It is with certainty a language of the realm of art and beauty. In both art as well as life, flowers have been used to tell a story as well as embody a certain meaning, truth, or more simply, as a visual vessel.

The sensory perceptions of color, shape and smell are evocative all on their own, embodying particular feelings and memories for different individuals. In America’s Ants and Flowers, the flowers are both the backdrop as well as a key part of the unfolding story, intermingled yet detailed and refined enough to differentiate between color and shape. In the bold Knife, Cheese & Paradise Flowers, the flowers are given both personality as well as attitude, as they tower and seem to almost engulf the plate of cheese as well as the knife.

Rimi Yang
Night Garden, 2016
Joanne Artman Gallery

For Rimi Yang flowers embody a different kind of symbol that can be traced to the artist’s unique heritage. Picking elements of both East and West, Yang creates a graphic patchwork that transverses this dichotomy through a visual narrative. Flowers can be as soft or expressive as any visual element, pending on the artist’s intent. As with other symbols, the particulars are not as important as the ways in which they are done. In this case, we love how these flowers remind us of the current seasonal change and the constant state of transition in the city that never sleeps.

Represented at JoAnne Artman Gallery: 511 A West 22nd St. New York NY 10011 || 326 North Coast Hwy. Laguna Beach, CA 92651

949.510.5481 || www.joanneartmangallery.com || [email protected]

Joanne Artman Gallery