Looking for Wildflowers (memories and art to benefit California)

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As an empath, I feel everything very deeply. It has become increasingly difficult to be on social media and watch the news, and increasingly difficult to look away. I know that anything I see happening to someone else, could happen to me - to any of us. 

Before the recent and devastating wildfires in Los Angeles, I’d started painting a new series, inspired by a scene I had in my mind - a Southern California meets Cape Cod twist. In my daydream, I was lying in a field of tall green grass, at the edge of a cliff that dropped down to the ocean. Wildflowers swayed gently around me, while the sound of crashing waves below echoed through me and the sun warmed my skin. Time faded from daylight to dusk to midnight. I was tired as I headed into 2025, and wanted to paint something light and uplifting. I chose wildflowers to build on an abstract floral style I’ve worked with in the past, with an added ocean view. You can listen to the playlist I painted alongside here. 

I lived in Southern California (Orange County) in my early twenties after relocating from the East to West coast for my first job out of college. I’ve been back home for 12 years, but every time I face another Boston winter, I wonder why I left. I think of the sand burning under my bare feet during year round beach flag football games or the way I was taken by surprise by the unrelenting heat and beating sun during February hikes with my dogs (both born and adopted in California). I am transported back to all the times I drove with the windows down on the PCH, or was one person in the crowd at a Lakers or Dodgers or UCLA or USC game. I remember every weekend I spent in LA - the run-ins with celebrities, camping on the beach in Malibu, Mariachi music outside the window of my friend’s apartment and the hours spent in traffic driving up the 405 on Friday nights. California is where I become vegetarian. It’s where I made and lost friends, had my heart broken and fell in love. It’s where I became an adult. 

So when news of the wildfires broke, I imagined myself on another timeline, if such a thing exists - one where I never left. I obsessively doom scrolled for days, tracking the fires and damage and checking in with friends who still live in the area. Of course, my grief doesn’t compare to the grief of those who still call it home, or those who have lost everything. I’ve personally donated to various individuals, Go Fund Me accounts and local mutual aid organizations. To continue to help, I’m donating 20% of the proceeds from this new collection, Looking for Wildflowers, to families in need, specifically from these Go Fund Me directories: Displaced Black Families and Displaced Disabled Folks.

All of the things I loved about living in California, the things that I love about New England, and the things that you love about where you live, are vulnerable. To climate change. To greed and disinformation. To apathy. There are endless, and increasing, injustices and tragedy all around. My art practice helps me process what’s happening around me. It helps me find the beauty. Knowing that I can create something from nothing. That there are still so many beautiful things left in this world, and more to make. That we have our imaginations, and each other.

There are always wildflowers for those who wish to see them - Henri Matisse 

Artwork Details

This collection includes 10 original acrylic paintings, ranging in size from 12x12” to 24x36”. 

7 pieces will be available on my website next Friday, January 31, 2025. My collector’s list will receive early access at noon EST, with the pieces available to everyone at 3pm EST. To join the collector’s list and receive a detailed collection preview and early access, please submit your email here.(EDIT: 8 pieces. I saw a painting I abandoned literally years ago in the corner of my studio and it was the perfect backdrop to make another one in this series - and I think it’s my favorite!)

3 pieces will be available through the 2025 Artists and Collectors Dinner at the Cultural Center of Cape Cod, on May 29, 2025. I am honored to be included as one of twenty five artists in attendance, with my work selected out of over six hundred submissions. Two of the pieces will be gifted to attendees of the event, which will be set in a lush botanical ambiance with an accompanying soundscape. If you are interested in attending as a collector, you can express interest through the Cultural Center, here.

As always, thank you for your support!

xo Jocelyn