Exhibition Info
A CORDIAL WORD
Since I was a child and no matter where I have lived, I have always loved flower gardening. Digging in and preparing the dirt, carefully arranging seeds or fragile young plants, and then watching all grow and bloom in the summer sun with birds, bees and butterflies flying around - pure magic. An amateur gardener, I am always anxious for the first hint of spring so I can rush out into the garden and start the seasonal round again.
My personal appreciation for flowers has been reflected in the visual arts where, for millennia, flowers have been a common theme explored by artists. One reason for this is their unquestioned beauty. A second reason for their popularity with artists is that, traditionally, flowers have been rich in both their religious and secular symbolism. In Ancient Egyptian mythology, for example, the lotus flower symbolized the sun and had strong ties to the concept of creation and rebirth. Lotus flowers are thus a feature in Egyptian wall paintings and relief sculptures. During medieval times flowers appeared in the borders of illuminated manuscripts and as details within larger paintings or decorative backgrounds in tapestries. In these early art works the flowers rendered were often symbolic in nature. A white lily, for instance, was a symbol of purity and many paintings of the Virgin Mary contain white lilies for this reason. In 16th and 17th century Dutch still life paintings, meanwhile, flowers shown wilting or decaying, are often symbols of mortality.
In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the use of flowers as independent subjects in art began in earnest. This was due to an increasing fascination with this subject in art began in earnest. This was due to an increasing fascination with this subject, facilitated by advances n the study of botany and by the importation of numerous new species of flowers into Western Europe. During this period, new species, such as the tulip, were very precious and this encouraged their botanically exact rendering by artists. By the 19th century the decorative potential of flowers became the most enduring impulse behind their use in visual art and through the art movements of realism, impressionism, post-impressionism and ultimately abstraction, artistic representation of flowers came to focus on explorations of pattern and colour.
The exhibition A Cordial Word, featuring works from the Collection of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, shines a spotlight on flowers and the flower garden. Expressing a variety of artistic styles and media, the artworks in this exhibition invite the viewers to reflect on the beauty of these natural wonders and appreciate and nuture the flowers in their midst.
A Cordial Word was curated by Shane Golby, Manager/Curator, Art Gallery of Alberta, Region 2 of the AFA Travelling Exhibition Program (TREX).
