Wildflowers of New Brunswick

"Wildflowers are robust and resilient flowers. They grow and thrive in areas that are often disregarded and not noticed. Despite our lack of attention and observation of them they reproduce and spread naturally in the environment of their own choosing.

I chose to focus on these flowers in my paintings since so often their beauty is overlooked and not really appreciated. When we start to notice and pay attention to them, we realize that they are everywhere and the more time we spend closely looking at them, the more we can see their wild beauty.

In this series, I placed these flowers: lupin, yarrow, pearly everlastings and purple loosestrife against wide open skies to highlight the feeling of strength and freedom they represent for me."

- Amber Young, 2024

“In the bustling urban environment, wildflowers rarely find a place to thrive, their beauty often overlooked in contrast to the vibrant landscapes of rural areas. My work draws from imagined scenes and idealized visions of these wildflowers, exploring the tension between reality and perception.

Without the benefit of direct observation, the distinction between what is truly a New Brunswick wildflower and what is not becomes blurred. An overgrown garden, where native and non-native species coexist, serves as a metaphor for this exploration. In these paintings, I celebrate the flora found in New Brunswick through a series of constructed arrangements and imagined spaces.

Each of the five paintings in this collection offers a tribute to the wild beauty of New Brunswick, reimagined through the mind’s eye. This series is both a celebration of nature’s diversity and a meditation on how we perceive and reconstruct the natural world in our minds.”

- Cliff Turner, 2024