Brandi Twilley | Recent Flowers

September 5 - October 18, 2025

Recent Flowers is an intimate presentation of new paintings by Brandi Twilley, marking her fifth solo exhibition with the gallery. Twilley’s still lives of flowers, a subject she has returned to often, become emotive metaphors for the artist's considerations of loss and impermanence.

The bright, sunlit flowers are all painted from life in Twilley’s studio, often in only one session. Depicted in various vessels on a paint-splattered glass palette, they capture the immediacy of the artist’s practice and the informality of her environment. The blooms are often turned away from the viewer, suggesting an interiority that viewers cannot access, and the simple arrangements look like they’ve been cut from the backyard or purchased at a grocery store. 

The darker works, all featuring black tulips on a black ground, are a particular fascination of Twilley’s. They are painted from photographs but refined through various sketches, and develop gradually over many months. So dark that they are almost difficult to discern at first glance, they are a meditative practice for the artist and subvert our expectations of what a still life should be.

For Twilley, like most artists who turn to still lives, the objects depicted are weighty with symbolic meaning. These works recall Dutch still life paintings of the seventeenth century, in which flowers represented at once beauty and its eventual decay – a form of memento mori. That same is true for Twilley, who writes that “Observing the beauty of flowers and their fast life cycle has helped me to reflect on and be at peace with the losses I’ve experienced in the last few years.” The life cycle of a cut flower is short, but we keep them in our homes despite this, enjoying their vibrancy and delicacy even as we watch them wilt and decay. These flowers are captured by Twilley in their peak, allowing us respite, pleasure, and reflection amidst a chaotic world.

Brandi Twilley (b. 1982, Oklahoma City, OK) lives and works in Oklahoma City, OK. She received her MFA from Yale University in 2011. She has recently exhibited at Charles Moffett (New York, NY), Josh Lilley (London, UK), 1969 Gallery (New York, NY), Zero Gallery (Milan, Italy), The Museum of Sex (New York, NY), and Kate Werble Gallery (New York, NY). She has had three solo presentations at Sargent’s Daughters (New York, NY). Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, ARTFORUM, ARTnews, The Art Newspaper, The New Yorker, Artnet News, Time Out, The Observer, and Hyperallergic, among other publications. She is represented by Sargent’s Daughters.