Leslie Baum
A Garden in a Vase: 4.01.20 – 4.01.21
April 1 – 25, 2021
“Why record a flower? What’s the point? They’re ephemeral, they’re never the same from day to day, they’re so brief, there are so many of them. Incremental change, inevitable loss.”
— Jordan Kisner
Last year, my shade garden began to bloom just as the stay-at-home order went into place. So I began picking fresh stems every few days and placing them in a vase on the dining room table, my ad hoc home studio. I found the flowers’ exuberant excesses—of form, color, line, and shape—irresistible. They compelled me to paint, and a daily project emerged. From a changing selection of colors, I would make three paintings a day. With the vase inches from my face and my eyes on the bouquet, I made the initial moves. Without considering composition, I let chance have a hand. Once immersed in a painting, I no longer needed to look at the blooms with the same intensity. The images would unfold and surprise me—sometimes becoming landscapes or abstractions, other times remaining a portrait of a particular arrangement.
By midsummer, I was picking blossoms from friends’ gardens for the project. In the fall, I foraged from parks and forest preserves. In winter, I turned to a florist. My engagement with the flowers had become a balm for the fear and anxiety of the times. I gazed on them all day long. In the morning over coffee. In the evening, out of the corner of my eye, while reading, eating dinner, or watching TV. These flowers—my garden in a vase—provided companionship and purpose during a year of isolation. Making daily watercolors concentrated my practice into something essential. Paint in response to what you see directly in front of you.
This show samples from more than 900 watercolors that have resulted from the project so far, presented in two sets arranged in chronological order, plus a handful of small canvases. It is the embodiment of my method for staying present during a very strange year. In this way, the show is about flowers but also not about flowers. It is about time and how a garden tracks its passage. Even a cut bloom follows the sun. It’s about vulnerability. A bouquet pulsing with color is also dying. Flowers fade. It is a meditation on enduring. A blooming garden is a testament to the life that continues to unfold regardless.
This exhibition opens on the anniversary of my first impulse to paint flowers cut from my garden. It is a celebration of life and beauty and an acknowledgement of the inevitability of change and death. Spring turns to summer. Summer to fall. Fall to winter. Flowers emerge again.
– Leslie Baum, 2021
