M A R I L O U P A L A Z O N
STOP... and Smell the Roses
Marilou Palazon has been painting large botanicals for over 20 years, but within her new solo show: STOP... and Smell the Roses, she treats them more like dramatic landscapes — exploring textures, ranges and folds.
Choosing to eliminate a “feminine” reference, Palazon instead emphasises the theatrical and sculptural play of form in a contemporary and monumental scale. Adopting a realistic style, Palazon employs expressive and loose brushwork and unfinished areas that allow the viewer to fall into the work and to travel across the surface. Yet, within her love of realism, there is no desire for hyper-realism — not needing to explain every detail instead, keeping the surface texture full of painterly brush and glaze work. Ragged markings are used to lift the energy of the piece, rather than the stillness and precision of a still life.
Palazon acknowledges layered emotional and historical content for florals, a long recognised passion in art, for Renaissance and Dutch masters or classical platforms. Exploring universal themes of beauty, time, fragility, life, death, decay and birth. “Presently, the world is an unforgiving place, a society on edge. My need for simple pleasures and to refocus on a subject as simple as flowers, to paint them, steadies my soul.”
Within their monumental scale, the STOP... and Smell the Roses collection, are de-constructed flowers than set out to narrate life and death. Beautiful natural forms having run their course and on the edge of decay. “I like the space of the struggle,” shares the artist. “There is great beauty also in this stage; life as a journey and respect for all stages of nature.”
There is a lack of perfection and a sense of nostalgia of what was; endless interpretations. “More than ever in these COVID anxious times my painting practice has held me / has given strong purpose/ held my nerve,” says Palazon. “It is the only place besides my family that I know to be true.”
