A reader praises Matt’s floral still lifes and asks whether he has ever painted bowls or baskets of fruit.

Matt responds:

In my first life, I was a funeral director.

The ritualization of someone’s passing is usually marked by friends and family sending flowers, so from very early recognition through my first 40-odd years, I was surrounded by flowers that were really in celebration of somebody’s life.

The manifestation to me is that flowers and people are really the same...  We come of seed, we grow, we flower, we wilt, we die, and we come back again.  The universal circle of life.  Whether we come back in the same universe or in heaven or whatever—people have all kinds of philosophies and religions that argue about that constantly and will until the end of the world.

But as far as I can remember, I never consciously set out to paint a bowl of fruit or vegetables.  I did paint a huge bowl with a bunch of faces coming out of it.  It was 4 foot by 4 foot.

Flowers, to me, more so than fruit or vegetables, mean many different things, which are not the things you would ordinarily think of as a flower:  the essence of flowers, the significance of flowers, the majesty of flowers, the messages that they bring of love and death, hope and despair, victory and defeat, and all the human conditions that flowers mutate into, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually.

When I look at a bowl of fruit, on the other hand, I immediately think, Which one would I like to eat that won’t mess up my clothing or stain my mouth?

I never get that feeling looking at a bunch of flowers; I go into some altered state of meditation and forget why I’m there.  Vegetables fill my stomach; flowers fill my soul. 

Matt