When does a painting really begin?

We don’t always know when inspiration begins. Sometimes it arrives all at once; other times, it builds slowly over days, even months. This piece began at the De Young Museum, standing before a Teotihuacan frieze. A carved flower seemed to pulse with life, its mineral reds and dusky greens still vivid after centuries. Later that same afternoon, I wandered into the glow of Florine Stettheimer’s Still Life with Flowers — vibrant, modern, with cool reds and a soft green hovering in the background.

Those two images stayed with me: one, ancient and grounded in earth; the other, expressive and full of motion. When I began painting, I reached for hues that echoed both — the iron oxides and celadonite of the frieze, alongside the brighter, cooler pigments that shimmered through Stettheimer’s still life. That palette — grounded and lifted — became a kind of bridge. These pigments don’t just shape the painting. They tether us, gently, to all the works made before ours.

Ancient symmetry and stylized form: a frescoed flower with lasting energy.

A riot of color and joy: brushstrokes that feel like celebration.

I wonder if that happens to you, too — when a color, a shape, a fragment from your day stays with you longer than expected. These are the starting points. Not always clear, not always logical. Sometimes we only understand them later.

For me, the flower that kept reappearing was a dahlia — the national flower of Mexico, and the city flower of San Francisco. A bloom that bridges geographies and histories. I began imagining: what would it look like for that flower to carry memory? What would it mean for something so local to also feel ancient, shared?

The first touches: mapping the flower and letting color speak.

Refining form, balancing the piece: where chaos begins to find rhythm.

In the studio, my process is layered and quiet. I break the bloom down, petal by petal, and listen. Some days I follow its form. Other days, I let the color take the lead. I glaze in layers to balance hue, tone, and temperature — trying not to control it too tightly, but to stay close enough to feel its rhythm.

A bloom rebuilt: layered, weighted, and still breathing: Rooted - Arrival

Maybe this piece is less about what I saw and more about how I followed it. And maybe that’s something to notice in your own world: what catches your attention lately? What small, persistent image keeps returning?

When you follow those moments, where do they take you?