Handflowers in a Vase

16 inch by 20 inch, 40.64 x 50.8 cm
oil on canvas
2026
$500

Handflowers in a Vase

The Handflowers series was inspired by my earlier work, Handflowers, painted in 2013. My interest in the series developed from observing Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers, particularly the way he depicted flowers from different angles, stages of growth, and states of vitality within a vase.

In Handflowers in a Vase, I parallel the visual forms of flowers with different handshapes used in American Sign Language (ASL). The hands represent various stages of a flower’s life cycle—from budding and blossoming to maturity and eventual withering. At the same time, the changing handshapes convey the expressive qualities of sign language, including communication, movement, identity, and emotion.

The vase serves as a container for these diverse handflowers, much like van Gogh’s vase holds flowers of different forms and colors. Rather than depicting botanical flowers, I transform the human hand into a symbolic flower, emphasizing the visual and expressive relationship between Deaf culture, ASL, and the natural world.

Through Handflowers in a Vase, I explore how hands can function simultaneously as flowers, language, and emotional expression. The work celebrates the beauty and diversity of signed communication while connecting the visual language of flowers with the visual language of Deaf people.