The present work is a large-scale painting from Marc Quinn’s renowned series of flowers. After photographing a diverse arrangement of fresh flowers and fruit from various markets around London, Quinn would create sizeable oil paintings with an extremely hyper-realistic layout. The “frozen in time” aspect is considerably apparent in the dramatic color palettes and saturated compositions in this series. Themes of life, vitality, mortality are reflected, outlining Quinn’s desire to unveil the relentless human desire to control nature.

Marc Quinn emerged in the 1980s in London as part of the Young British Artists. Quinn is known for his explorations of the human form and nature through surreal imagery and unconventional materials, such as his self-portrait series Self, 1991-present, which consists of sculptural busts made from the artist’s own frozen blood. Quinn was born in 1964 in London and graduated from Robinson College in Cambridge with a degree in the history of art in 1985. He went on to work as an assistant to the sculptor Barry Flanagan before exhibiting his own work in the early 1990s. Quinn was the first artist to be shown by renowned dealer Jay Jopling, and his work was included in the landmark 1993 Charles Saatchi show, Sensation. Since then, he has exhibited at institutions worldwide including the 2003 Venice Biennale, the Tate Gallery in London, the Fondazione Prada in Milan, and the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. He lives and works in London.