B(L)OOM!
Explosive Floral Expressions
Curated by Jeffrey Jarzynka - AIR Pittsburgh. May 2019
Flowers are the embodiment of beauty in so many forms, perfect artistic creations with a temporal existence. Although fleeting, they are an expression of the joy and color that can exist in life, and they bloom perpetually. Their allure has never ceased to enchant us, yet how does one approach a subject matter that is already so exquisite in design? The challenge lies in reinventing a time-tested favorite, the floral “still life,” which is pleasing yet generally static and fails to do justice to the very essence of flowers and their nature.
Cara has a contemporary vision of florals that is vibrant, bold and alive. The goal of this series was to explore floral compositions in a way that highlights their textures, forms and colors with a raw expression of the energy, dynamism, and the life that they possess. The artist’s vigorous, decisive brushstrokes and her intricate compositions elicit a sense of motion and whimsy while her sophisticated color schemes evoke emotion and intrigue. Cara constructs the floral forms with thick slabs of paint, but ultimately, she allows the subject to fracture and unravel almost as if the realism dissolves into an expressive floral explosion.
