If white can be said to contain all colors, then flowers, as signifiers, contain every signified. It is not that flowers are meaningless— real flowers and plants, of course, are indifferent to interpretation— it is that painted flowers, depictions of flowers, are so overburdened and overlain with meanings and significance that they become, across all cultures and across the arc of all cultural histories, a repository for all possible meanings. They overflow.

In this class, we will delve into the 10,000+ ways one can conceptualize and handle a painting of flowers, looking at diverse examples of painters painting flowers over time. In partnership with the Maria Mitchell Association and the Nantucket Conservation Foundation, we will take a wildflower walk with Nantucket Conservation Foundation’s botanist Kelly Omand, discovering our subject matter, sketching and finding samples to work from. The next two days we will work back in the studio with water-based mediums to realize our own paintings.

This class will be held at AAN’s Visual Arts Center at 24 Amelia Drive, including an initial meeting at Amelia Drive to board MMA’s van for the first field study.

MMA and NCF Members can register as AAN members to receive their tuition discount.

This workshop is supported through the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Nantucket Cultural District.