The Simple Beauty of Flowers
When I started really pursuing my artist journey a year and a half ago - trying to take a hobby I enjoyed and grow it into a sustainable business that brought beauty and connection to my collectors - I would have never thought that I would achieve that through painting flowers. Until four years ago, I never even cared about flowers. As far as I was concerned, boys got girls flowers if they loved them, and love was overrated. Love wasn’t real, and what people thought was love was just being miserable together until they died.
I didn’t grow up surrounded by relationships that fostered anything more than that, and if that was what flowers were supposed to resemble, then I never wanted a single one. They served as a whited sepulcher: hypocritical little plants thinking they stood for better things because they had pretty petals.
In high school, I read “The Language of Flowers” by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, and things started to shift. During the Victorian Era, flowers had ‘secret meanings’ - and that thought was cool. I was intrigued, and I wanted to learn more.
Once I started working, I met Glenn who showed me a more tender side of life: a side of life that was far more gentle, where it was safe to slow down a little and take everything in. He taught me that you didn’t have to search for sunshine. Eventually, it will come on its own.
Four years later, I look forward to the little blooms popping up in the spring and summer. I cannot wait to stop at the local greenhouses and nurseries - of which there is no shortage - and find gorgeous flowers for our outdoor space.
A month ago, I woke up to the sun pouring in the bedroom window, and had an idea for a painting. It wasn’t from a dream I’d had, but it was more like a sticky note taped to my brain that someone had left in the night. It changed everything. The painting that came from that thought…It. Changed. Everything.
Before I’d finished breakfast, I’d figured out all the details that had been left out, and by the end of the day, the entire painting was planned out, sketched, and started.
My floral alphabet - a painting for my daughter - has totally changed my life. As an artist, you want to create things that others will love. You want to create things that foster connections, bring joy, invite beauty…
Every artist has their own unique style. If you look at a painting’s colors and brushstrokes - the way things have been created - you can tell who the artist is without seeing the signature. I wanted that so badly for my art. I wanted people to look at my art and say “Kaitlyn did that.” And if you look at my work, it’s there. In the little details. But I don’t have a cohesive body of work put together. There are cityscapes and chickens and bumblebees. Finding what I wanted to paint - not what I thought I wanted to paint - has been the most difficult aspect of my journey. I’ve read countless articles. I watched so many courses and classes and seminars. And still felt incredibly unfulfilled.
As I painted each petal on this painting though, I fell more and more in love. The colors were gorgeous, each brush stroke was exhilarating, and the finished flowers brought so much joy into my studio space that I shared it among friends with more than one excited squeal.
It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy painting buildings and cityscapes like I’d been doing, I just didn’t fall in love with them like I fell in love with painting flowers. This painting for my baby sparked something in my heart that I didn’t know was there, and my cup of creativity runs over. Painting in the studio has never been so freeing.
This painting has shown me how much beauty is held in an intentionally placed brushstroke, how much joy comes from painting something that I’ve found I truly love and enjoy. It has shown me that the most wonderful things in life are delicate, and that flowers stand for so much more than fake love. They stand for self love, admiration, and to the ones that grow in peculiar places: that you can do anything - no matter the circumstances - as long as you never give up.