Chris Coles

Intimate Landscapes Chris Coles

When I first did some flower paintings it was mainly for my mother back on the coast of Maine, so she could hang some of my paintings in her house which were not paintings from the Bangkok Night. But over time, I learned that the German Expressionists, especially my Expressionist hero Emil Nolde, also did flower paintings...in the Expressionist style. Distorted, non-realistic, exaggerated colors, a little bit weird. And in the Bangkok Night, the girls in the bars are sometimes referred to as "flowers" and the men who are chasing them are sometimes referred to as "butterflies". By necessity, flowers are colorful and heavily scented. In order to better attract the bees, insects and butterflies they depend on for pollination and reproduction. Butterflies are also often very colorful and their color patterns are an important element in butterfly male-female attraction and stimulating the urge to reproduce. Both flowers and butterflies have relatively short lifespans so the urgency of attraction, pollination and reproduction is at the forefront of their daily existence. Humans put on high value on flowers, despite their transient nature, using them around births, marriages, deaths, Valentine's Day and Spring Fertility holidays like Easter. Somehow, flowers are important and they also make great paintings!