20 × 20
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.

The gesture is interpreted as a welcome to her garden, a blessing on the scene, or a sign of the "chaste sexuality" within marriage, as she oversees the fertility and love represented by the surrounding figure. Positioned in a natural "halo" of myrtle trees, Venus acts as a mediator between human love and higher, divine love.