Memorialized Flowers

Memorialized Flowers is an exploration of how grief reshapes our relationship with the natural world, and how nature, in turn, offers a quiet path toward connection and transformation. He created this piece after growing dahlia flowers in honor of my father, who passed away last March. Tending to those blooms became a ritual, an act of remembrance that grounded Hixson in the present while keeping me connected to him.

At the center of the painting, the dahlias serve as both a symbol of death and a vessel for memory. Their vivid, layered petals echo the complexity of loss: painful, beautiful, tangled, and alive all at once. By painting them on such a large scale, He  wanted to honor their significance, allowing them to occupy the physical and emotional space they held for him throughout the year.

The yellow background, full of sweeping, motion-like tones represents the way memory moves: drifting, warm, sometimes blurred, sometimes sharp. This golden glow holds the flowers in a suspended, dreamlike moment, as though the past is reaching gently into the present. The additional plants surrounding the central vase speak to the continuity of life, growth, and renewal, reminding me that grief does not halt transformation; it invites it.

Nature became his bridge back to his father. Through nurturing the dahlias, Hixson felt connected to him in a way that words and rituals could not provide. This piece captures that connection, how something as simple as a flower can hold the weight of love, loss, and the enduring process of healing.