Into the Wild
Valley of the Red Tulips began humbly, on a sketchbook page once covered in leftover blue paint. What might have remained a fragment of studio process instead became the foundation for a work that blends memory, observation, and abstraction. Over this blue ground, the artist added gestural linear marks, evoking both the suggestion of tulip stems and the shifting contours of mountain ridges. The layered surface recalled personal experiences of traversing the high-altitude landscapes of Colorado and Tennessee, where clouds obscure all but the peaks and ridgelines of the mountains. Out of this dialogue between chance and recollection, the composition of tulips emerged.
The finished work is defined by its deliberate restraint: a two-tone palette of red and blue, accented only by outlines in silver and black. This economy of means gives the image both clarity and resonance, echoing traditions beyond its immediate subject. While not intended as imitation, the work evokes the spirit of early Japanese painting—such as the great screen paintings of Rakuchū Rakugai-zu—in its atmospheric simplicity and its ability to suggest vastness within a contained space. Valley of the Red Tulips thus becomes a meditation on transformation: of leftover paint into landscape, of line into form, and of memory into a work that bridges the personal and the universal.