Peonies combines a still life within the artist's studio with invented social realism to pose a question about the role of artists. The question is one of attention and obligation: the piece challenges the viewer to balance a draw toward beauty with a confrontation of suffering and injustice, and to reconcile these depictions of the world into a single truth. Images of violence and serenity are interlaced to create a richer narrative about our history and nature, while the patina of the artist's table and the studio itself becomes a metaphor for our continual labor to understand and create meaning from this reality.
It is painted with a range of material techniques that combines heavy, expressive impasto mark making with a subtle layering and building of transparent glazes to capture motion, light and shadow.
