Death is What You Make of It

It began with flowers I couldn’t bring myself to throw away. Saved petals from my mother’s puja, her funeral rites, gathered without any idea of what they would become. For a while they were just that: flowers I refused to let go of.

Eventually I mixed them with paint and threw them onto canvas, chasing something I couldn’t name. When that wasn’t enough, I asked the priest at my parents’ temple to save the flowers from the ceremonies, and slowly a process took shape. I dried the petals, soaked them in oil and pigment, and arranged them across the canvas. Then I waited. Over three to six months I watched the oil dry and the petals affix themselves to the surface, the work finishing itself in its own time.

Through constant experimentation, and through giving myself over to the process, the most painful experience of my life resulted in a new medium I never could have dreamed of.