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DANNIELLE SERGENT

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I love flowers: their fragility, their power, the fragrances (good and bad) and the hedonism of their blooms.
I have been painting them for years in great detail and with a passion for all of the variety that they provide. Each flower is a new exploration.
I often create my own, adding petals, stamens, switching the colors and the form of the flowers; but I know these exist somewhere.

My recent work are botanical portraits, a surreal approach to the perception of a group of flowers.
The faces are subtle and hard to discern. This is intentional.
The original faces are bright and colorful, and the faces are held together with illustrative wires and pins.
The tension between the frail flowers and the steel wires pulling on them is visceral. Yet the flowers do not pull apart.

The power of the flower. 
My latest paintings, the Dark Lovelies, are a mix of old and new aesthetics and techniques.

I start with a collection of images: photos of bouquets I have created, botanical drawings from past centuries, online photo posts and images from botanical textbooks.

All of these are compiled digitally into a portrait.

At the end of the digital process, I invert the color and light so that the recesses are brighter than the edges.

This will give the final painting the illusion of being lit from within and it purposely rearranges the depth and layers of the image.

This requires an understanding of what colors will do when flipped (complementary) and what light will remain to illuminate the painting.

This is then printed on wood and sent back to me to start the oil painting process. I use the print as a base but have ultimate flexibility when I paint over to push or pull parts of the image.

The personality of the portrait develops during the painting process with color and texture signaling confrontation, flirtation, pride, and shame. Some are the genesis for scents based on their “personalities”.