Glory in the flower
How Adam Matak’s painting bloomed during lockdown
“For me, real creativity happens in response to unexpected restrictions and limitations,” says Adam Matak.
COVID-19 restrictions influenced Matak’s latest exhibition, Let a Thousand Blossoms Bloom, organized by The Assembly Gallery. Matak’s big paintings and small collage works focus on flowers, a subject he loves.
Lockdown meant spending more time at home.
“It was during lockdown I noticed I live on a street brimming with floral gardens. These gardens became all I saw during lockdown, during daily walks or outside my window. So this was all part of the new context for my making.”
Lockdown also influenced the size of his works.
“I wanted to play with distance in the show. The paintings are large works that you have to view from a distance to take in. The smaller collages require you to get intimate and come up close to appreciate.
“After spending months locked indoors or daring to go out and see loved ones, I don’t think we’ve ever been more conscious of physical space than right now.”
In “Flowers for Emily (if bees are few),” a six-foot-high painting, Matak juxtaposes a dynamic, centralized 17th-century floral arrangement with bee motifs borrowed from 20th-century advertising and animation. Emily is 19th-century American poet Emily Dickinson.
“I began sourcing out historical depictions of the flowers that appear most in her poetry. I used these to sketch out a shape.”
Matak arranges flowers and grapes in a narrow red vase in an ambiguous bluegreen space. Flowers and a piece of paper spill out as they move upward and take over the top two-thirds of the composition.
Three thin leaves hang out of the vase and point downward to balance some of that upward movement.
Bees hover among the flowers, their cartoonish style a replacement for the more lifelike bees in traditional flower paintings. Red dotted lines trace bees’ flights.
“The bees came from Dickinson’s poem, ‘To make a prairie.’ I first interpreted the poem to be about independence. The poem’s also about the importance of interdependence, of connecting with others to make a life.
“When we first went into lockdown, I turned to art and imagination to make sense of things and make them manageable. I didn’t realize how much I hugged people until I was no longer allowed. That is why the bees I painted almost never touch the flowers.”
“Grafting Arrangement” offers a more spacious composition. Two red and three white blooms are set against looping black lines. A grid of white lines fills the background.
“Overall, my process feels quite loose. I begin with some anchoring idea, which can come from any part of my life: flipping through an art history book, going for a walk, parenting. That idea guides me toward some key flowers, which then steers me toward some key colours, and then I just go along for the ride.”
Matak’s smaller florals are collages constructed from paint sample cards.
“I was working on the flower paintings when art supply shortages started. So I started using paint swatches to help me figure out some colour issues to be economic with my materials. And this led to a discovery. The swatches made good compositions on their own.”
In “SW7733 September Window,” a lively bunch of flowers sits in a vase. The petals are enhanced by the layering of smaller shapes that add texture and serve as a reminder of how the smallest of pieces can create the illusion of depth.
“The paintings are a kind of portrait of what has been done with flowers in our visual culture collectively. The collages are just me, colours, and blades.”