Rain over Blue Flags:
16” X 20” Acrylic on Canvas with signature paint flip
Rain Over Blue Flags – Original Mixed Media Painting
Acrylic pour, fluid movement, memory-rooted intention
Rain Over Blue Flags is a painting shaped by memory — wet feet in spring, arms full of contraband beauty, and the quiet joy of a mother softened by flowers.
The piece is inspired by the endangered wild irises — known as blue flags — that grew in the marshlands near the artist’s childhood home along Sandy River Beach in Maine. Though forbidden to pick them, she did so with care, taught to leave the roots and take only what she needed. Each spring, she would carry armfuls of these blossoms back to her mother — risking reprimand to offer her a moment of peace.
The blue flags were among the only things that seemed to bring her mother stillness and visible joy. In those brief arrangements, her mother would sit, smoke, and simply be with them. It was a rare and sacred kind of presence.
This piece captures the tension between rain and bloom, rebellion and reverence, loss and the eternal return of spring. It is both a tribute and a release — a remembrance of beauty offered even when love was complicated, and a gesture toward healing through return.
Rain Over Blue Flags is for anyone who’s ever brought a forbidden offering home in the rain, just to make someone smile.
