"This piece shows eight dried sunflowers in a vase. The flowers are like traces of memory, of warmth, time, life, and the sun. I have been very interested in this relationship between form and emptiness, between the flowers and the light. The two subjects are given their own space in the composition; the flowers to the left and the open space to the right. It is the emptiness that allows you to feel the presence of the light, the space that gives clarity to the object. I wanted the piece to have an emptiness full of possibilities; like in a piece of music the silence between the notes is as important as the notes themselves. Drying flowers has a long cultural history in the Kent countryside where I have my studio but to me they also symbolise a way of grasping something impermanent, if only for a short time. "
Joseph Black, Winter 2025