Chloë Holt RCA FRSA - “The Ecstasy of Bloom”

A major still-life by Chloë Holt, depicting late-summer dahlias, echinacea and flowers gathered from our garden at the height of their abundance.

Chloë has always been fascinated by the fleeting moments within a garden: flowers at their fullest, changing light, petals beginning to fall and that brief point at which beauty becomes almost excessive. In The Ecstasy of Bloom, the flowers are not treated as a formal arrangement but allowed to crowd and overlap, creating an exuberant composition that moves between observation and abstraction.

Painted in oil, walnut ink and mixed media over gesso, the surface is characteristically rich and physical. Deep crimson, burgundy and near-black blooms emerge through passages of chalky white and soft pink, with fluid drawn marks and heavily worked paint creating movement throughout. Light settles across the petals as presence rather than drama, concentrating attention on the intensity of bloom at its fullest, most celebratory moment.

Chloë has paired the painting with a magnificent antique gilded frame, its exuberant scrolling ornament punctuated by satyr faces. The choice is deliberate: the satyrs, with their historic associations with nature, fertility and Dionysian revelry, amplify the sense of abundance within the painting. Antique frame and contemporary painting become part of the same composition, celebrating the garden at its most luxuriant and almost ecstatic.

Chloë Holt RCA FRSA is an award-winning British artist and my wife. One of the youngest artists ever elected to the Royal Cambrian Academy, she won the Kyffin Williams Drawing Prize in 2012 and in 2010 was awarded the International Lorenzo il Magnifico Prize at the Florence Biennale for her works on paper.