By painting on glass, I open up the painted surface: The world behind shines through and the surrounding environment is reflected. The play of two-dimensional painting and three-dimensional installation allows the painted surfaces to gradually become their own object.
My oil paintings of orchids and their symbiotic partners bring together the consideration of their interconnectedness with more abstract thoughts on surfaces. Orchids as surfaces beyond which life-giving symbiotics fungi networks hide; orchids as surfaces that are in direct connection with the outer environment, and with one another, through insects.
The paintings in this series show close-up views of diverse orchids, enlarged multiple times from their original size. I use the subject matter of orchids to translate categories of surfaces into paintings: each painting of this series represents a different essential property of the idea of a surface.