Jaime Arredondo

Cielo Rosado,2001
Oil on Canvas, 54x54"

In Mesoamerican culture the flower operates not as decorative device as in the Western world but comprises aspects of a dual character, recollecting moments of the living and of the after-life. They act not as items of embellishment but as portals to gain access to the sacred and divine. Native peoples view the flower as living symbols of memory, faith and spirit, concrete artifacts by which we may tap into the lives of our ancestors.
As the central motif it plays a significant role in allowing me to embrace issues from Western and non-Western cultures. The intensity of consideration in color and light towards the flower by Monet, and my research in Native American treatment of them have informed the primary direction of my work. Combined with a similar baroque background utilized in previous works, my present work goes further to explore aspects of the sensual and the erotic. The flower has been magnified in scale, color intensified, and its voluptuous nature exposed to create a painting that is as tangible as flesh itself. I have composed a flower that does not simply depict, but is reinvented within terms of the grandiose, the sublime and the hallucinatory.