Blair Saxon-Hill issues a soft call to action in her exhibition, Peace Piece, imploring us to embrace ourselves and each other with love and openness while also shaking off political disillusionment. Her newest paintings feature still lifes of carefully arranged cut flowers, and Mallorca-inspired pastoral scenes and sunsets, alongside images of American dystopian disarray and, at times, even terror.

Painting from life engages a different part of the artist’s brain than when working solely from her imagination. Since the pandemic, Saxon-Hill has found personal solace in collecting flowers from local markets, arranging them into bouquets to admire and study, and then painting them throughout their full life cycles. The social engagement with her community when procuring her bounty helps stifle dissociative feelings and the heaviness of each day’s news blitz, and her relationships with the flowers become creative acts of self-care and inspiration.

Flowers are universal symbols of peace and tranquility, but today’s world is clearly not all roses. To that point, Saxon-Hill cleverly juxtaposes emotional representations of modern strife and concern with her more jubilant odes to nature. We witness families huddled together in bed, hiding from an approaching, shadowy presence; isolated individuals, completely lost in endless news cycles; and a tender, goddess-like woman, quite literally giving the world a hug.

Peace is always the answer, yet it feels disorienting and paralyzing to have it in such a precarious state. Many artists are choosing to respond to today's immense troubles and chaos, and through their unwavering attention to what is before them, we may all find better ways forward. Saxon-Hill does not shy away from addressing inequalities and safety, but she also understands the value of lifting emotions that enable us to persevere and carry on. 

Blair Saxon-Hill (b. 1979, Eugene, Oregon) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, and Mallorca, Spain. She studied Studio Art at Reed College and has exhibited at: SHRINE (NY, NY), CCA Andratx (Mallorca, ES), Pace Prints (NY, NY), Nino Mier (Los Angeles, CA), Collaborations (DK), Venus Over Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA), and Hallie Ford Museum (Salem, OR). She was included in the New Museum's International Triennial of Contemporary Art, "Soft Water, Hard Stone", in 2021, and has been awarded fellowships by the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Ford Family Foundation, the Oregon Arts Commission, and the Hallie Ford Foundation.