This painting is inspired by a Brugmansia I’ve grown for years, overwintering it in a makeshift root cellar I built in my basement, dragging it up and down the stairs every fall and spring. Brugmansias are large tropical shrubs that could never survive our New York winters on their own, so by the time this plant blooms each summer, I feel like I’ve earned its trumpets as much as it has. It produces many blossoms at once rather than a few at a time throughout the season, and as the afternoon light fades into evening, all that abundance turns fragrant, calling in the moths and other pollinators that only come out at night.

For this painting I challenged myself with a new, high-key palette, pushing the colors brighter and hotter than I usually work, to get at some of the excitement of seeing a Brugmansia in full bloom. This plant’s whole existence is a story of survival against the odds, one that takes real community effort to flourish this far from where it was born. The painting is as much about persistence, commitment, and care as it is about the flowers themselves.