Stillness sparks. Petals flare, strokes collide, and what began as quiet blooms into blaze.
Still life has never been my style — too proper, too polite. In class, I painted the assigned subject: foam balls on plastic leaves in a faux-marble vase. I dressed it up with color, pushed the shading, reimagined reality. The result was… fine. Safe. Traditional.
In the classroom, the painting was serviceable — flowers behaving as flowers should. But when I pulled it into the digital studio, restraint no longer held. I set the palette ablaze, overlaid texture, and let the strokes collide until the flowers no longer sat still — they sparked, they ignited.
What I discovered wasn’t just about color or technique, but about tension: between restraint and release, tradition and rebellion, stillness and spark. In that translation, I discovered I could carry a form forward and let it change, as one medium slipped naturally into the next.
Here, tradition caught fire — and still life refused to stay still.
What happens when abstraction is no longer an overlay, but the starting point? Step into Cascade.
Continue to Cascade →
