Aesthete

Aesthete. Acrylic. 2018

Aesthete (n.)- a person who has or affects to have a special appreciation of art and beauty.

I have always been fascinated with nature, and I owe my fascination to my mother, who always has a brilliant array of plants that she tends to behind our house every spring and summer. My appreciation of natural beauty was the inspiration for this painting.
I wanted to step out of my comfort zone and try my hand at an abstract style acrylic painting, rather than a realistic pencil drawing. I focused on keeping my brushwork loose, while maintaining the recognizable features of flowers and leaves. Normally, when one thinks of flowers, they think of bright and happy colors. But when I think of flowers, I feel a sense of calmness knowing that something so beautiful and delicate, can be strong enough to flourish in a sometimes harsh world. Thus, I composed my painting using muted colors that would usually appear vibrant in real life.

This painting is derived from my personal feelings of nature, art, and beauty... not from the opinions of others.

However, if you take a closer look at my painting, you see a hidden message. Across the middle of the piece, I wrote the word "aesthete" horizontally in Morse Code. Why? Well, for lack of better words, sometimes, you have to "stop and smell the roses." By this, I mean that you sometimes have to take a break from the demanding world, and just look- look at the way the clouds form, look at the delicate structure of the flower petals, look at the way the morning dew glistens on the grass as the sun is rising. Life is not as complicated as we make it out to be, and Aesthete represents the real and simple beauty of life.