This gestural and tonal pastel belongs to a series of works on paper that depict close-up examinations of dead flowers collected by Wilke. She says of the work, "As I mapped out the ancient sunflower head, I thought about how it represented past, present, and future -the object/evidence in front of me, last season's flowering, and next year's growth."
Janice Wilke earned a BA in Humanities from New College of Florida in Sarasota and studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She is currently chair of the art department at the Baldwin School, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and teaches drawing, painting, and art history in Baldwin's Upper School. She is represented in the collections of the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg, the Community College of Philadelphia, the William and Uytendale Scott Memorial Study Collection of Works by Women Artists at Bryn Mawr College, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Fellowship.
