Cassandre Salomon paints botanicals the way most people breathe - as an act of survival that became liberation.
Working in abstract realism through acrylic and oil, Cassandre creates botanical paintings that exist between what we see and what we feel when we encounter the natural world. Her work isn't about perfect representation. It's about the moment a flower becomes a portal back to yourself.
This understanding came from lived experience.
For years, Cassandre navigated commercial real estate finance as a Senior Analyst - managing mortgages, negotiating deals, operating where self-expression was a liability and intuition something to suppress. She was successful. Completely disconnected from the artist she'd buried to survive.
The cost became unbearable. So she left corporate security to reclaim what she'd lost.
Her book, "The Left Shift: From Fawn to Lioness," chronicles this restoration - how art rebuilt her cognitive architecture one brushstroke at a time. How it returned her perception, awakened her intuition, gave her courage to refuse anything impeding her self-expression, and restored the cognitive balance required to live as a whole human being.
The book is also a manifesto: Drawing is a twin skill to reading. Our education abandons one, leaving generations operating on half their neurological capacity. Art isn't a luxury for the talented few. It's a birthright we've been taught to surrender.
Cassandre’s botanical work embodies this philosophy. The interplay between precision and intuition, abstraction and realism - these aren't just aesthetic choices. They're invitations to engage the underutilized right hemisphere, to see holistically rather than analytically, to remember that beauty exists beyond what can be measured.
She is also a keynote speaker on art as a pathway to mental health, self-expression, confidence, and healing - particularly for women who've spent years performing competence at the expense of wholeness. Her paintings hang where people are doing their own restoration work - recovering from burnout, reclaiming creativity, learning to trust intuition again.
Cassandre’s journey from suppressed artist to full-time creative isn't a personal triumph story. It's proof of concept. Evidence that the right brain hemisphere can be strengthened. That self-expression is non-negotiable for human thriving.
Her work asks: What parts of yourself did you learn to suppress? And what would it take to paint them back into existence?
Cassandre Salomon works in acrylic and oil, creating abstract realist botanicals from her studio at Amaya Art. Available for commission and exhibition.