'Many artists who made their names in figurative work are now creating a different sort of portrait.'
By Amanda Fortini, February 28, 2024
Los Angeles-based artist Vanessa Prager is included in a feature essay for 'T': The New York Times Style Magazine, about contemporary painters who choose floral subjects for their recent work.
For some artists, the decision to paint flowers is simply about tapping into their dazzling allure: seductive colors, fleshy textures, shapely forms. Prager, who lives in Glendale, Calif., says that in 2022, with two small boys and a third baby on the way, she was "still in shock about the world," waiting for it to return to its prepandemic state, when she had an epiphany: "I knew that the world was different, and it was going to be that way and I was just going to do my part, basically, to make it beautiful." Her whimsical floral busts, which she renders in her signature sculptural impasto technique and vibrant Southern California palette of bougainvillea magentas, jacaranda purples and palm frond greens, are her attempt to share a hopeful vision for the future: "To me, this was the most obvious way to do it: with the sheer beauty and joy that flowers hold so universally."
