8 × 8
Oil on Canvas
The Double Botticelli Study Series (Valentines Day)

Working from studies of Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus and Primavera, I translated these iconic compositions into a series of rose-tinted underpaintings. The blush ground acts as both atmosphere and pulse, allowing the figures to emerge through warmth rather than line alone. By filtering these Renaissance allegories through a contemporary lens, and timed with Valentine’s Day and Botticelli’s (and mine) birthday on March 1, I aim to soften their mythology into something intimate and immediate. The works become studies not only of Botticelli’s forms, but love as renewal, love as a return, and as love to be a source of inspiration. In Sandro Botticelli's Primavera (c. 1482), Venus stands centrally in a, holding or slightly lifting the edge of her white, red-draped dress while gesturing with her right hand. Positioned as a goddess of love and fertility in a, she wears a modest, flowing gown.

She holds or lifts her dress, sometimes interpreted as a, gesture of welcome or a, modest display.