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Ephemeral Atmosphere · 2023
Summer Lilies
Available · in the studio, Phoenix
The summer lily held in atmosphere — not a still life but the feeling of a flower that has stopped needing to be literal.
Summer Lilies (2023) is a bloom of memory — a painting that captures not the flower itself, but the feeling it leaves behind. This 72 x 108 inch acrylic on canvas work from the Ephemeral Atmosphere Collection is tender, warm, and gently radiant, like sunlight through petals.
The composition is loosely floral — layers of pale pinks, lemon yellows, and soft greens bloom across the canvas in sweeping, translucent gestures. The shapes do not describe lilies exactly, but evoke them in energy, in openness, in upward motion. Between the colors: space. Breath. Light.
I painted Summer Lilies in early summer, when the days began to stretch and the air shifted. It wasn’t about a specific garden or bouquet — it was about the atmosphere flowers create. The way they hold presence without asking for attention. The way they remind us of beauty without permanence.
This work shares sensibility with the floral abstractions of Cy Twombly, whose gestural marks suggest nature without binding it. Like Twombly, I’m drawn to the idea that a flower can be a gesture — a stroke, a breath, a burst of color.
Summer Lilies isn’t botanical. It’s emotional. It’s an invitation to feel warmth and softness without reason. To pause.
As part of the Ephemeral Atmosphere Collection, this piece holds both celebration and ephemerality — the bloom and the fading, equally beautiful.
Where to see it. In person at RituStudio, Phoenix, by appointment. Represented by Jarrow & Goodman, Los Angeles.
The space it needs
- Wall
- At least 10 ft wide
- Ceiling
- 10 ft or more
- Light
- Natural light transforms this work — morning and evening light read differently
- Daylight
- Burnt sienna and umber warm considerably under afternoon sun, and with contrast this low, direct light washes the lilies into the field. A north or east wall keeps the atmosphere soft and the forms legible.
Lives best in
Living room 5/5
Summer Lilies earns its 5 here because a living room is the one space that can hold tenderness without apology, and its nine-foot wash of burnt sienna and shadowed umber rewards the slow, repeated looking that daily life allows.
Bedroom 4/5
The muted earth palette and emotional quietness score a 4 in a bedroom, though the nine-by-six scale requires a wall of at least ten feet or the blooming-and-fading presence becomes a looming one.
Details
- Size
- 9 × 6 ft (W × H)
- Medium
- Acrylic on canvas
- Year
- 2023
- Collection
- Ephemeral Atmosphere
- Palette
- Brown · Earth Tone · Shadowed Umber · Burnt Sienna
- Weight
- About 65 lb
- Ready
- In the studio; delivery 6–10 weeks
Its ArtGram
ArtGram.Fork
- Texture2
- Form2
- Colour range2
- Palette4.2
- Contrast1.9
- Abstraction Quotient4
