Colorful Geometry (white)

"Layered Petals"

A rose in full bloom, seen straight on. Its petals overlap toward the center in layer upon layer, drawing inward in a softly turning spiral. The distinctive color and dotted texture produced by special pigments give the bloom not the look of a photograph, but the soft, painterly quality of a single illustration. The bright, light-bearing center, and the shadow that sinks ever deeper toward the edges. Against the jet-black ground, the inherent grace of the rose is drawn out all the more, in an artwork that holds a quiet, dignified presence.

What Has Been Entrusted to the Rose

The rose has long been embraced across the world as a flower bearing many different meanings. In ancient Rome, it was customary to suspend roses from the ceiling at banquets, with the unspoken rule that whatever was spoken beneath them would not be repeated outside. The Latin phrase born from this custom, sub rosa, meaning "under the rose," survives in English to this day as an expression meaning "in secret." For the ancient world, the rose stood not only for beauty but also for silence and trust.

From the Middle Ages onward, the rose became widely associated with the Virgin Mary in Christian tradition. The white rose stood for purity, the red rose for the Passion. In fifteenth-century England, a civil war fought beneath the red rose of Lancaster and the white rose of York raged for some three decades, and would later be known as the Wars of the Roses. Love, faith, secrecy, and war: that so many meanings have been entrusted to a single flower is perhaps a reflection of the deep regard people have always held for the rose's grace and beauty.