Shit Makes Things Grow: Why I Paint Flowers

I was fifteen years old when I experienced my first heartbreak. I laid in my childhood bedroom staring blankly at the ceiling as my dad knocked on my door. My dad and I are cut from the same cloth: we feel our emotions deeply, though often quick to bottle them up and compartmentalize. I knew he was there to check on me. The conversation now is rather hazy as it happened so long ago, though one thing stuck with me: Sometimes things go to shit…but do you know what’s good about shit? It makes things grow.

Ten years later I sat alone in my first apartment. I was inspired by a painting in the background in a documentary I was watching: a big floral painting on a stark black background. I thought to myself “I could make that” and set off to Michael’s to grab a canvas. Three months later emerged my magnum opus at that point in my art career: a 30x40” moody floral flooded with pinks, purples, and blues. To this day I am still proud of it.

A year later, I made another— and another, and another. Suddenly I was becoming known for these big, moody florals, and I couldn’t stop. I didn’t understand at the time what compelled me to create these paintings, but I felt drawn to continue.

Painting has always been an introspective process for me. Having a vision, adapting my own expectations, and executing the concept has become a rhythmic process for me. While I paint, I often find myself thinking of my current struggles and past experiences in a third party kind of way. I use this time to come to terms with a lot my own quirks and come out from it understanding myself clearer in the end. I am grateful for finding such a therapeutic process for myself.

I thought back to what my dad said to me 15 years ago at this point. Without realizing it, flowers came synonymous with healing for me. All my challenges and traumas and woes were the shit I needed to go through to grow, and now I have something beautiful in its place.