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Brash yet fragile, the Flower Paintings contain Colen’s accumulated impressions from the last six years, not unlike the traditional Daoist landscape painter who must wander through the mountains in order to depict his topography. This series is the culmination of a pivotal phase in Colen’s career as a groundbreaking American painter.
With the Flower Paintings, Colen relinquishes control of the painterly mark and turns the action of the brushstroke into a smashing or shattering gesture. Instead of paint, natural seasonal and artificially dyed flowers from corner bodegas and markets in New York City were employed to mark the canvas, applied with quotidian objects—rubber mallets, dildos, bowling pins, and billiard balls—rather than paintbrushes. Gradually the flower marks began to smear from the flowers being dragged and pressed into the loose canvas.