“In joy or sadness, flowers are our constant friends.”
– Okakura Kakuzo
Five years ago, Santee began a body of work based solely on flower imagery. Prior to this, the focus of her art was on insect forms. She began to incorporate plants and flowers into insect themed compositions and her interest in flora took over.
Her current creations are surreal anthropomorphic floral characters existing in a human world. Themes of identity, feminism, strength in the face of the current social climate, as well as environmental concerns, course through the veins of the work.
She uses a variety of recycled materials : junk mail, sketchbook pages, objects found in secondhand stores, cardboard tubes, labels, toy parts, and dried gourds from her garden. The color palette is rich and loud, bright and vibrant, like the colors of her 70’s childhood toys.
Santee sees flowers as a metaphor for the human condition, a constant reminder that life and beauty will thrive when given care and regard.
