At This Moment Before Transformation (Roses)

2025, oil on linen, 20 x 16 x 1.5 in, aluminum floater frame

These roses—grown by the incredible gardener Peg at Point Reyes Flowers—were overwhelming in person, each bloom the size of a wineglass, shouting not with sound but with light. They pulsed with that strange tension between beauty and foreboding, the feeling that something radiant is already on the verge of vanishing.

I painted them in that threshold moment, before transformation—or perhaps before decay—when you can’t tell which way time will turn. Roses have long symbolized impermanence, a quiet reminder that nothing lasts unchanged, yet these seemed to resist that fate. In the studio they glowed against the dark, almost defiantly, insisting on their vitality, on their electric stillness.

To me, this piece is about holding presence in the face of change: the hum before what comes next. Not fighting, not clinging—just waiting, breathing, trusting that you will come through altered, but intact. The moment before the turning—when transformation is already underway.