What A Flower Is To Me

I enter the stem and wind through each petal of the flower-shaped labyrinth. I slowly meander in and out, moving counterclockwise around its center. The eighth and final petal leads me to the circular paths that curve inward to the flower’s core. Like a butterfly, I pause in the center and collect energy—like nectar—before I begin my outward journey.

As a child, my relationship with flowers began when I grew a sunflower and a pansy from seed in little pots. I then transplanted the seedlings into my front yard. I named the sunflower Shannon and the pansy Albert and regarded them as friends. Later, as a teenager, I discovered the sensuous beauty of flowers through the art of Georgia O’Keeffe. Her larger-than-life images had a way of drawing me into the heart of a flower. Georgia writes,

Nobody sees a flower really. It is so small, we haven’t time. And to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time. If I could paint the flower exactly as I see it, no one would see what I see because I would paint it small like the flower is small. So I said to myself, I’ll paint what I see—what the flower is to me—but I’ll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it. I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers (1).

Georgia’s words and art inspired me, a young artist, to see more deeply. Her Jack-in-the-Pulpit series exemplifies her vision of depth, leading us inward to the very essence of this flowering plant (2).

Years later, while taking a botany class in college, I explored the anatomy of a flower and discovered the mystery within. Scalpel in hand, I carved into the base of the flower, its ovary, and sliced along the length of the pistil and through its sticky tip, the stigma. I then examined the flower through a microscope and wondered: Who would have thought that a flower has reproductive organs akin to my own? Yet, as the vertical incision through its ovary revealed, tiny ovules were hidden there, analogues to the ova unseen in me. This realization was an intuitive awakening to my shared identity with flowering plants and with all life.

Now, 30 years later, I have created my own larger-than-life flower in the form of a labyrinth. The journey along its path and into its center reveals other dimensions of experience and perception, deepening my understanding of what a flower is to me.

For all that is,

(1) O’Keeffe, Georgia. (1976). Georgia O’Keeffe. New York: The Viking Press.

(2) See the overview of the Jack-in-the-Pulpit series, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.70179.html