Lush Florals from a Bold Palette
By Mitch Cohen
First impressions are forever: I will always envision big, bold, colorful flowers when Summer Lydick comes to mind. Lydick paints beautiful flowers on canvas ─ big, close up, tropical, jaunty, playful. They are a reflection of Lydick herself, she says, “My work is a self-portrait.”
My first encounter with the vivacious Lydick was at the Bayou City Art Festival in 2017. If we spoke at all, it was a passing greeting, but the impression was made. She was professional and so was her booth, covered floor to ceiling in floral paintings. I didn’t know it was Lydick’s first juried art festival. She recently told me she had been waitlisted, and got in when artists cancelled after Hurricane Harvey. Since then, she’s been accepted into more than a dozen juried fine art festivals.
Lydick loves being on the road and making connections with people, and it’s a thrill to get a response to her art. But even before joining the festival circuit, Lydick was no wallflower.
After getting bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art, Lydick painted on her balcony in Paris for an exhibition, and completed large-scale murals for cities and corporations. She infused her colorful aesthetic into the total redesign of a children’s wing of a church. She even created the artwork for individual suites of a hotel in Costa Rica.
When festivals remained closed in 2021, Lydick executed large window displays of her work for luxury retailer Tootsies. She also single-handedly created a pop-up show in Miami for the launch of favorite author Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, Big Magic.
Lydick works two distinct series: sunflowers and tropicals. Sunflowers symbolize positivity, happiness, courage, and warmth, and have become her signature theme. Each painting is an original that embodies the artist’s playful optimism and bold confidence.
In her tropical series, Lydick features hibiscus, birds of paradise, monstera, and palms, among other varieties. These paintings pulse with the vibrant electricity of hiking through a teeming jungle toward a waterfall, or walking along a sandy beach at sunset.
“My art is uplifting and positive,” Lydick says. “There’s enough heavy negativity these days, so I’m doing my part to put positive energy back into the world. Color saves lives. It inspires us to think better, work smarter, and play more. My art is about beauty, color, and joy; ultimately, it’s about hope.”
A recent addition to the nearly 20-year-old First Saturday Arts Market, Lydick attended Houston’s premier indoor art market, BAM! The Big Art Market, that merged First Saturday Arts Market and The Market at Sawyer Yards in a one-day, indoor, air-conditioned event. The event took place at the Silver Street Studios Warehouse, 2000 Edwards St., August 12, coinciding with Second Saturday Open Studios.
Get details on Summer Lydick’s upcoming events on her website, https://www.summerlydick.com, and follow her on Instagram to catch her dancing while she paints. You probably guessed that already, right?
Published only on ArtValet.com