American Beauty was created in response to the emotional weight of the current political and cultural climate in the United States. The work embraces excess through loud color, layered marks, and over-the-top beauty, as both celebration and critique.
 
Circular, floral-like saturated forms bloom across the surface, echoing the spectacle and consumption embedded in modern American life. Beneath the vibrancy, darker tones and dense passages emerge, suggesting erosion, tension, and decay just below the surface. What initially appears joyful or decorative gradually reveals a more complicated undercurrent.
 
Built through an intuitive, layered process, the painting combines paint, pastel, and gestural line to create movement and depth. Areas of transparency coexist with heavy, assertive marks, allowing moments of beauty and discomfort to exist simultaneously. The result is a work that reflects contradiction through abundance and unease.
 
American Beauty invites viewers to observe that tension and consider what lies beneath what we consider most beautiful.
 
Details
Political Abstract Mixed Media Painting
Mixed media abstract floral painting on paper
18 x 24 inches
 
Collector Note
This is a one-of-a-kind original. Variations in line, texture, and layered color are intentional and best experienced in person.
 
Original artwork by Maria Jewett.