Created at the beginning of 2024 during a year’s sojourn from painting, The Agony of Flowers is a metaphor for a moment caught in time, capturing a glimpse of the world as both barbaric and poignant. Throughout the centuries we have utilised flowers not only for sentimental reasons but we have learned to manipulate them to suit our own purposes – both genetically and chemically. The Agony of Flowers strongly evokes the struggle for survival in harsh conditions, where despite the odds, flowers bloom only to wither away too soon. Brutal and perhaps somewhat menacing, these sculptures cast a shadow over the fragility of life. Signalling their fertility to available insects, their fragile existence symbolises impermanence and the pain that accompanies such beseeching and fleeting beauty, The Agony of Flowers display dried peppercorns as seed heads that can no longer become fertilised or bear fruit. Made using papier mache, mesh, barbed wire and dried peppercorns, these fantastical flower sculptures evoke Neo-Gothic noir characteristics. However, they portray the end-game of a flower’s life, in this instance, symbolising the waning of my mother’s memory and her defiant defence of it as she succumbs to the slow blur of dementia. They are also markers of a time of change for myself – for me, a third chapter of the female trilogy.