Call me obsessed but I need roses around me always and always. And when I’m not admiring their presence around my home or designing with them, I’m reading about them.

Perhaps my favorite rose painter of all has come back into my life by happy accident. I was watching a modern artist mixing colors and she alluded to Frans Mortelmans highlight techniques. The moody work of Frans Mortelmans has always captivated me. Born onto the backside of the Romanticism wave, Belgian artist Frans Mortelmans kept virtuous to conveying the bold and powerful colors of nature in his works. This was at a time when Impressionism was beginning its assault on color value.

There is a precision about Mortelmans’ painting but also a blur of abstraction, which is something I admire in both painting and photography, especially. He paints with this disembodied sensualism that is defined just enough. Most of his paintings sink into a darkness never to be fully drowned–always saved by color and expertly placed highlight. A master.

Knowing his body of work is largely floral in nature, I set about a bit of journey to acquire a physical copy of the book of his work to serve as design inspiration. I should tell you, this book plays hard to get, it is rather difficult to find–rightfully so! A precious object for anyone’s collection.

However, after contacting the Frans Mortelmans foundation with my pious plea, I was very quickly connected with an antiquarian book dealer in Belgium to fulfill this request. So many thanks to Erik Tonen for making my dreams come true!

“To put it in a contemporary way, roses were Mortelmans’ core business.”