Untitled (Black and White Orchid)

This series of flower paintings subverts one of the oldest forms of picture making: the still-life. To create these hyper-realist oil paintings, Quinn creates a still-life arrangement in his studio using flowers and fruit bought in London on a particular day. Since most of the flowers and fruit in these compositions would never bloom at the same time, or even be found together in the natural world, they show us the way in which human desire has created new seasons - bringing together in one geographical location things that nature would not assemble. Quinn photographs the arrangements, which are sometimes set amid a snowy ground or volcanic sand, and then makes oil paintings based on the photographs. The paintings depict a frozen moment of 'unnatural' time. Often large in scale and dramatically coloured, their beauty belies a sinister subtext: the relentless human desire to control nature. Titled after freaks of ecology the works offer up a corrupt beauty that suggests our possible future.