"As a child, I spent weeks at a time hospitalized with lung disease. Through spells of sickness, I took solace in my imagination, drawing and redrawing hundreds of versions of the same subject—each act of repetition pulling me deeper into a realm where sickness could not find me. 

"In spring, quarantining with my family, first subconsciously and then consciously, I found myself reaching for the same comfort—the comfort of repetition—that I had decades earlier. Like the confines of a hospital room in Seattle, my world shrank to the size of my studio. Through the meditative and soothing process of creating, the uncertainty of living in a country ravaged by a novel virus dissipated. I disappeared into other worlds—amalgamations of imagery existing somewhere between memory and imagination. 

"The result, Flower Mounds, is a cohesive series of verdant, undulating, biomorphic work. The series is an expression of my own exuberance for life and a love letter to the natural world, borne of a coping mechanism from early adolescence. Flower Mounds offers an escape into soft, surreal landscapes: a safe place to land.

"Flower Mounds incorporates a wide breadth of unconventional materials, using only what I had already at home—including everything from sample house paint to mortar to Styrofoam. My commitment to the safety of quarantine unwavering, I began hand-making paper when my supply of other viable surfaces dwindled. To do this, I used, among other tools, a plastic kiddie pool. On delicate paper, I painted rolling hills carpeted with flowers.

"In Flower Mounds I have painted the soft green mountains in the Land of Enchantment, the desolate Sonoran Desert bathed in its warm, soapy hues, and the fireworks show that is a Californian Super Bloom, a veritable explosion of glowing orange. 

"That joie de vivre manifested in Flower Mounds connects deeply to ritual, to nature, to the Queer virtue of radical happiness, and to celebration as a sacred act of grieving."

Lex Gjurasic is a visual artist originally from rain-soaked Seattle, WA currently living in dusty Tucson, AZ. She has exhibited her work nationally for over 20 years most notably in 2009 as a featured artist in the exhibition Kokeshi: Folk Art to Art Toy at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, CA. In 2017 her video was made part of the permanent collection at the Getty Institute as part of Miranda July's Joanie4Jackie archive. Recently she has delved into Public Art completing a mural with the City of Tucson's Downtown Murals Project as well as a temporary immersive exhibition at the Scottsdale Public Library with Scottsdale Public Art. Much beloved in Tucson she was nominated in 2018 for Best Visual Artist with The Tucson Weekly.

You can find more of Lex's work at lexgjurasic.com and on Instagram @lexgjurasic.