Grace, Art and Flowers

Stephanie Neely

All of my work is inspired by and dedicated to the best person I have ever known. His kindness, patience and goodness are unsurpassed. I am privileged to know him, to love him and to share his life. To my husband, Kim, the love of my life.

The why.

Art is made as a response to an internal push, an overwhelming force pressing the artist to say something about the experience of living, an internal truth which words cannot express. 

Art is not really an analytical process although it can be and often is an exercise of the intellect. The mind is guided by something else, an intuitiveness which overtakes the artist in the process. Decisions are consciously made about subject matter, composition, size . . . but something else, some hidden, indescribable thing occurs in the making of art. Picasso referred to art as something larger than himself, something which overwhelmed him in the making and took over. Author Leonard Shlain refers to artists as having intuitive abilities to see truth which is later confirmed by science – the life of the spirit guiding the life of the mind.

The best art connects with the eternal quality of truth and is filled with symbols of the past and images of renewal - of old things made new again. When speaking about Rembrandt, biographer Simon Shama referred to his interaction with tradition – a young man engaged in an old thing determined to express timeless truths in a new language.  Re-appropriation without spoliation, distortion or lies.

Flowers and Grace

The choice of floral subject matter is informed by the pleasure that I experience in the presence of flowers or their images. The combination of color, scent and texture is incomparably soothing. Presentation is guided by a mental picture of something precious emerging from the void, mercy from desperation, unexpected gift from hopeless despair. This is how grace looks to me  – inexplicable light emerging mysteriously from utter darkness, illuminating the  unexpected and undeserved gift of new life which is visually represented by the flowers.