This work belongs to my series Cracks in My Flowers. I depict a nude figure resting in quiet contemplation, her gaze turned downward as she folds into herself amid a cascade of opulent blossoms. I render the flowers in warm ochres, dusty roses, and faded golds, recalling the lush abundance of Dutch Baroque still-life painting, while a delicate veil of cracks and texture across the surface evokes the patina of an aged canvas.
I interrupt the body with a single stroke of deep crimson acrylic—hand-painted and scanned into the composition—like an open wound. I want this gesture to feel raw, visceral, and deliberately physical, breaking the dreamlike harmony of the scene and grounding it in something more fragile and human. It marks the point where my painting and my photography meet, where beauty is disrupted by vulnerability.
Drawing on the tradition of memento mori and botanical still-life, I meditate on tenderness, impermanence, and the quiet ache of introspection. I see the figure and the flowers as sharing the same fate: blooming fully while already beginning to fade. Through the union of digitally treated photography and physical painted intervention, I seek a fragile equilibrium between the analog and the digital, the body and the bloom, 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.
