When I finally had a little time to think about getting back into my studio, the paintings I had begun during the fall and winter suddenly looked uninteresting and frivolous to me. My energy for painting felt very low.

Meanwhile, a small bouquet of flowers sitting on our kitchen table began to wilt. I’m sure I was thinking about the beautiful small flower paintings that Edouard Manet painted toward the end of his life, which I have always loved. I had been able to see many of them in person during a Manet show the previous summer at the Art Institute. I found a bunch of small painting panels lying around my studio, which I usually use to make preliminary studies for larger paintings, and I began painting flower studies on them. A few friends sent me pictures of bouquets they had brought home, and I discovered other images of flowers among my old photos. These flower images felt ordinary yet intimate to me, touching, because we know the real flowers soon begin to fade and wilt. They seemed especially poignant during the cold Chicago winters; set on windowsills, their showy bursts of reds, yellows and purples glowed against the cool grays and browns of the outdoors and the mysterious light of evening.

Gradually, I started working larger, and began including the rooms where flowers were placed. The windows began revealing more of the outside world, and the spaces became more complicated. I think I wanted to tell a little more of a story - these small tender pieces of the natural world, brought inside our living spaces for us to interact with and be cheered by.