About the Flower Paintings

“Whenever you are sincerely pleased you are nourished.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sam Jungkurth does not paint flowers—he rejoices in the intimate and immediate expressions of living nature, rendering pleasures for the nourishment of the aesthetic mind. Against expectations, these lithesome figures of Iris, Narcissus, Rose, and Dahlia, emerge from the vanishing-point in liminal manifestations of human-like desire, nostalgic and capricious, inspiring emotional tension between the serene and the passionate, between the spiritual and the sensual.

These paintings are blossom-portraits, exploring the images of a cherished genre by bursting forms of massive visual sensation, exposing the naked delights of nature in uncommon views. Floral portraits—paradoxical, but possible in the hands of the right artist, and Sam Jungkurth invokes that kind of credibility. Decidedly, this artist has the clear grasp of knowledge and intuition that assures the rendering of portraiture in its claim to depth and appearance: roughly edged character or softly-contoured personality embraced in luminous textures dictated by knowing and powerful brush work.

The thoughtful viewer is always beguiled by the psychologically suggestive shapes in nature’s vista, and Sam Jungkurth’s paintings satisfy the pleasure, commanding centrality on the canvas as well as in the nexus of our imaginations.

James Pinney, Curator