As the blossom fades

Acrylic, pastel on canvas.

30x40"

As the Blossom Fades

I painted this woman at a moment when beauty is changing.
She sits surrounded by color—almost swallowed by it. The brilliant yellow, the field of marks behind her, the enormous red shape, and that beautiful blue dress all suggest abundance and life. Yet her face is nearly without color. She is quiet, still, and somehow separated from everything blooming around her.

As the Blossom Fades is about what happens when we realize that nothing stays at its peak forever.

We spend so much of our lives celebrating youth, beauty, beginnings, and things in full bloom. But there is beauty in what comes afterward too. Flowers fade. Bodies change. Faces change. Careers change. Relationships change. We change.

The woman isn't disappearing. She is becoming something else.

I deliberately left her expression ambiguous. I don't know if she is sad, reflective, exhausted, or completely at peace. Maybe she is simply sitting with the knowledge that time has passed—and understanding that there is nothing tragic about that.

The flowers may eventually fall away, but what remains is the person who lived among them.

Sometimes the blossom has to fade before we can see what was underneath it all along.