If I could declare an official painting medium for Florida, it would be watercolor. The flat grasslands of the Everglades, the palms bending in the wind with fronds wildly dancing, the hot colors of blooming bougainvillea and hibiscus all ask to be expressed in watercolor. When the watercolorist is successful, the outcome looks spontaneous, the color vibrant and brushstrokes expressive.  

 

I often choose still life subjects and Florida is an ideal setting.  It is as though I were creating my own landscape on a tabletop when I combine patterned fabrics, books, vases, shells, and the lush flowering plants and exotic fruits of Florida, such as the local kumquat. The worth of the object is not in its monetary value. As Norman Bryson writes in Looking at the Overlooked, “Still life takes on the exploration of what ‘importance’ tramples underfoot.  It attends to the world ignored by the human impulse to create greatness.”