I admit the flowers in this picture (Echinacea) I had forgotten in my studio. After weeks they dried out, but they kept their color. At one point, they fell on my couch and spread everywhere.
Since chance is an important factor in my creation process, I decided to work with it and experiment and try to capture this beauty.

I never meant to publish this picture, but after I showed my experiments to a friend, he insisted that I should print them. As a tribute to the old masters of still life painting that can be found from the 16th to 18th century throughout Europe, especially in the Netherlands and Germany. My friend first thought that I had taken a picture from one of those hundred-year-old Dutch prints. He was convinced the little seeds that lay on the front glass were flies surrounding the fleeting beauty of the fading flowers. While I never intensely studied the old masters, somehow, I knew their pictures. Their stillness lures them to dwell in the picture. The meditational aspect of viewing or the contemplative rest these pictures offer fascinates me.

The black background and subject matter, too, are common ground with the “old masters still life.” One difference I’d like to point out. You’ll find layers, such as objects in front of each other, and depth, but surprisingly, you’ll never find the illusion of perspective.