My Veteran (Self-Portrait with My Grandfather)

My Veteran (Self-Portrait with My Grandfather)
This self-portrait functions as a meditation on attachment and impermanence, two themes that have shaped my practice over time. Following the deaths of my mother and grandfather, I preserved their funerary flowers and began painting them as a way of remaining in dialogue with them. I also started buying flowers for myself, often Stargazer lilies, folding them into these arrangements as gestures of my presence and closeness to them.  
This work is the third painting in Consolation Flowers, an ongoing series in which floral still life becomes a site of remembrance and conversation with those who have passed.

Oil on canvas, 66 × 44 in.