Jean Lowe: Heavy Petal

A concentrated study around the 17th-century era of Dutch flower paintings, Heavy Petal includes a mix of small and large-scale paintings on panel, canvas, and paper, each providing unique surfaces for casein paint to reveal its particular depth of color and vibrance. This selection of works, which the artist has been primarily focused on for the past year, are a characteristic playful but often faithful interpretation of the works of Dutch painters like Ruysch, Seghers, Beert and others.

Through examining the assignment of value to beauty and excess across the decorative arts of Early Modern Europe, Lowe’s works often comment on issues of today with the same degree of exaggeration. In context, this era in Holland was marked by rapid developments across the arts and sciences, in part funded by the wealth and power gained from their violent colonization tactics across the Americas, Africa, and Asia. In the mid 1600s, "Tulipmania" reached its height, crashing a speculative bubble of insatiable demand and cost inflation for the flowers. This era of the tulip as a status symbol was represented by the many Dutch artists that painted remarkably-detailed still lifes of flower arrangements set against a dark backdrop, often included with other rare flowers or fruits imported from Dutch colonies. At the same time, the Vanitas genre was also flourishing, using recurring motifs like skulls and decaying fruit as a reminder of the certainty of death and worthlessness of material possessions. While the flower paintings suggested birth and fertility on the surface, what lurked beneath was the fleeting nature of life and its vanities.

After the reception, the show will be open by appointment.