This work belongs to my series Cracks in My Flowers. Depicting a nude figure reclining, her body half-dissolved into a luxuriant cascade of dahlias, peonies, and poppies that bloom and wither in the same breath. I let the flowers grow over and through her, so that flesh and petal become indistinguishable—a single living organism caught between abundance and decay. The warm, candlelit palette and the worn, dusty surface evoke a Dutch still-life left to age in shadow.
I draw a single dense stroke of deep crimson acrylic—hand-painted and scanned into the composition—across her eyes. I want this gesture to act as both wound and veil: it withholds her gaze, guards her interiority, and tears a raw, physical rupture into the soft sensuality of the scene. It is the exact point where my painting and my photography meet.
Drawing on the tradition of memento mori and Baroque botanical painting, I meditate on surrender, intimacy, and impermanence. I see the body and the bloom as bound by the same fragile fate: most beautiful precisely because they are passing. Through the union of digitally treated photography and physical painted intervention, I search for a tender equilibrium between the analog and the digital, presence and disappearance.
Limited-edition fine-art photographic print on matte acrylic glass (60 × 80 cm), produced with UltraResolution on Fuji Crystal Archive paper, framed in a gold Slimline profile with a metal suspension system.
