Broccolini: Playful Abstraction and Organic Memory

Medium: Acrylic on Canvas
Size: 4ft x 4ft
Creation Date: 2020
Collection: Geometric Splendor

Broccolini (2020) is part of my Geometric Splendor Collection, where I explore the humor and whimsy within abstraction. Created in acrylic on canvas, this 48 x 48 inch piece is a playful homage to the everyday, transforming the humble form of broccolini into a vibrant dance of shape and color.

Using blocks of rich green, accented with orange and hints of pink, I allowed the forms to float freely across the surface, overlapping and interrupting each other. There is no attempt at realism; instead, Broccolini invites viewers to reconnect with their sensory memories of food, childhood, and spontaneous joy. The painting is an ode to the absurd, to the beauty of exaggeration, and to the irreverent humor that abstraction can hold.

In spirit, Broccolini resonates with the works of Elizabeth Murray, whose playful, cartoonish shapes stretched the boundaries of abstraction and infused it with levity. Like Murray, I am interested in how abstraction can feel bodily, messy, and humorous, resisting the austerity often associated with geometric art.

Broccolini is less about a vegetable and more about a gesture — a gesture toward joy, toward embracing the unruly, and finding beauty in the unexpected. As part of the Geometric Splendor Collection, it brings softness and humor into the dialogue of hard-edged abstraction.