During these last long months of trying to understand and express the feeling of my ungrounded quarantine existence, I have felt a compulsion to paint objects floating in space. These objects have mostly been flowers, which for me symbolize beauty and hope but also the fleetingness and fragility of life.

 

My work is always rooted in my experience of the world, with nature as my vocabulary. The paintings are primarily inner landscapes, but they grow out of the act of observing my actual surroundings. They are an exploration and a search—a dialogue between what goes on inside and out.

 

As my work progressed, simpler spheres began appearing among the flowers. I think of them as protoplanets among archetypal flowers. They serve to activate the space and increase the gravitational attraction among the elements. At the same time the flowers themselves proliferated.

 

Together these paintings reflect my emotional journey through these months of time suspended—a sense of being adrift between worlds—a time with its own eloquence and imperatives."

 

​Astrid Preston