Published 01 August 2019 in Publications
Art Times
The importance of flowers
From his description of flowers, he received in hospital, just after his heart bypass operation, one can see how important flowers are to the artist. But even without this description, his love of flowers would have been overwhelmingly clear from the large number of very high standard of his flower paintings. It would not farfetched, to come to the conclusion, that the flower, with its beauty, fragility and brief lifespan, is just another way of averting death with beauty, and ultimately with life itself, however fragile and shortlived it might be.
Many of his flower paintings are untitled. The flowers - in various phases of their lives – are frequently painted against dark and brooding backgrounds. The impression of a threatened fragment of beauty and life against the surrounding shadows of destruction and death is created. Over the years there was a sort of irony in the way these masterly works have been received by the critics and the broader public. While these are the works with which the artist made a living over the years, critics tend to see them as less serious works in view of the modern tradition. It is in these unpretentious, beautiful and technically excellent depictions of flowers that the artist triumphantly depicts his deepest and most honest response to the universal and ever- present threat of death. *The above is an extract of opinion published in Michael Heyns, Chronological 2007 written by Fransi Phillips.
