Recently, someone who came to my studio looked around at all the walls and asked whether I only ever paint flowers. The question stopped me in my tracks. It seemed like a judgment. That somehow, I was a limited artist who couldn’t paint anything else. I guess the word only made a difference to me. Every once in a while, I’ve heard this type of statement, but for some reason, this time it struck a chord with me. Perhaps it was because the person who asked it was also an artist.

Since this visit, I’ve been ruminating about her question. I wonder whether artists who only paint portraits of people or pets are also questioned as to their output? Are non-objective abstract artists asked whether they only paint abstracts, or are they able to paint in other styles?

I recall when I first began studying art and art history and saw the early drawings of Willem de Kooning, being quite surprised when I realized he was an excellent draftsman. Before seeing that early work of his, I thought he painted abstractly because he couldn’t draw. But I was young.

I learned quickly that artists are called to their work by forces beyond competency alone. The choice of their style or subject matter is often a calling to some higher energy source, emotional pull, or intellectual pursuit. The final artwork is a key to appreciating the depth of the artist’s inquiry and evolution.

Artists often work in a series while exploring concepts, mediums, mood, and life circumstances. Had this artist visited my studio in the 1970s, she would have asked if I only ever painted windows. In the 1980s, 90s, and early 2000s, the question might have been whether I only worked digitally. A few years later, she might have asked if I only painted portraits or gardens.

Each artist’s work, including my own, evolves over time. Some are due to life changes, personal or emotional. Others are due to changing interests or insights into questions the current work has amplified. Some series of work may reach an impasse or closure.

Over the fifty years I’ve been creating, my art has reflected my ever-changing life. My interests and needs have evolved, and my work has reflected some of those changes. There were personal losses, anger and fear, as well as broader political concerns, financial ups and downs, career paths that led to leaps in skills, changes in physical fitness, and obstacles to overcome. There have been time pressures that can influence what mediums I choose to create my work.

For the last eight years, I’ve been painting large flowers in oils, most of them bursting outside the edges of the canvas with energy. Each of these bold flowers has a different story to tell. Every one of them has arrived with a new challenge. Sometimes, years after I’ve completed and signed a painting, I return it to the easel since I feel it has new things it wants to say. As I continue to evolve, these flowers also take on new directions.

A few years ago, having made a conscious decision to calm the hectic pace of my life, close down the commercial side of my art, and spend more time creating for myself, my artwork changed yet again. I returned to my first love, oil painting. This decision also allowed more quiet time for reading, reflecting, and listening. As I continued to evolve, spiritual and intellectual awakenings increasingly inform more of my work. Embedded in my large flower paintings are layered the ideas and emotions surfacing in me at that moment. Tomorrow or next week, I might be thinking other thoughts, and my art will follow that thread of ideas.

Part of the responsibility of being an artist is that amazing opportunity each day to reflect change. Change in thinking, emotions, feelings, or awareness, or change in circumstances, physical or financial. Those changes absorbed by the artist don’t necessarily trigger massive, recognizable alterations in an artist’s work. Over time, perhaps years or even decades, they slowly transform the outcome. Looking back over my fifty years of creating art, I can read the threads of my biography weaving the story of my life.

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