Hilma af Klint

Reflection on What Stands Behind the Flowers May 11 - September 27, 2025 MoMA

When I visited Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers in September, I felt an immediate resonance with her shift toward observing and studying the natural world. Seeing her botanical drawings—so precise, attentive, and yet quietly charged with spiritual intention—reminded me of why I return again and again to natural forms in my own work. Like af Klint, I’m drawn to the meeting point between what can be seen and what can only be sensed.

Her Nature Studies felt like field notes of both the physical and the invisible. Each plant was rendered with accuracy, yet accompanied by small abstract marks that suggested the emotional or energetic qualities she perceived. That combination of study and intuition echoed something essential in my own practice. When I print with seaweed, fish, or plants, I’m not only documenting form—I’m creating an impression of place, a record of presence, and a conversation between material and meaning.

Af Klint’s willingness to let observation reshape her spiritual vocabulary affirmed something I’ve been exploring for years: that nature isn’t simply a subject but a collaborator. Her drawings felt like reminders that art can hold scientific clarity and symbolic depth at once, without needing to choose between them.

Leaving the exhibition, I felt a renewed commitment to working slowly, attentively, and in partnership with the natural world—allowing each surface, each print, each trace to carry both the weight of the real and the possibility of the unseen.

July 2, 1919 Iris pseudacorus Yellow iris

Spiritual reservation

Belief in the creation act,

Reverence for the power of thought,

Longing for holiness based on…

Reverence for the strength of feeling