What Is Contemporary Romanticism? And How Is It Different From Traditional Romanticism?

When I describe my work as Contemporary Romanticism, I'm not talking about romance in the candlelight-and-love-letter sense—although I certainly have nothing against either.

I'm talking about something much bigger.

It's the belief that beauty matters. That emotion matters. That wonder, longing, memory, faith, nature and the ordinary experiences of being human are worthy subjects for art.

And in that sense, Contemporary Romanticism has deep roots.

First, what was Romanticism?

Traditional Romanticism emerged in Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It developed, in part, as a response to an age increasingly focused on reason, order and intellectual certainty.

Romantic artists pushed in another direction.

They valued emotion, imagination, individuality and our deeply personal response to the world around us.

Nature became especially important. But the Romantics weren't simply painting pretty landscapes. A raging sea, an enormous mountain, a violent storm or an endless sky could make a person feel small, awestruck, frightened or overwhelmed.

That experience became known as the sublime—beauty mixed with awe, mystery and sometimes even terror.

Artists such as J.M.W. Turner, Caspar David Friedrich, Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix used nature, dramatic light, color, human experience and imagination to create paintings intended to make the viewer feel something.

And that part feels surprisingly modern to me.

So what is Contemporary Romanticism?

There isn't a single rulebook for Contemporary Romanticism.

For me, it means taking that Romantic belief in emotion, beauty, imagination and meaning and bringing it into the world we actually live in.

The subject doesn't need to be a shipwreck or a lone traveler standing above an enormous mountain.

Sometimes it's a peony.

A shaft of morning light.

A woman carrying something no one else can see.

Flowers bending toward a window.

A half-finished cup of coffee.

A vineyard in September.

Or even the pile of wet towels left behind after grandchildren have spent the afternoon playing in the pool.

The scale may be smaller.

The feeling isn't.

Traditional Romanticism searched for the sublime. Contemporary Romanticism searches for the meaningful (sometimes in the mess)

That may be the distinction I connect with most.

Traditional Romanticism frequently placed human beings against something immense—the ocean, wilderness, storms, mountains, history, tragedy.

Contemporary life gives us different landscapes.

We live surrounded by screens, schedules, errands, noise and endless reasons to hurry.

Perhaps our modern act of rebellion is not escaping civilization for a mountaintop.

Perhaps it is noticing.

Noticing the ridiculous pink of a dahlia.

The way late-afternoon light lands across a table.

The beauty in a face that has changed with age.

The flowers someone brought home.

The ordinary objects that quietly accumulate into a life.

Contemporary Romanticism asks us to look again before we walk past.

It isn't about making everything pretty.

This is important. Romanticism was never simply about prettiness. It contained grief, danger, loneliness, awe, mortality, mystery and longing alongside beauty.

I believe Contemporary Romanticism does the same.

A painting can be beautiful and still carry sorrow.

Flowers can represent abundance, but they can also represent fragility and loss.

Light can be beautiful precisely because we understand darkness.

Beauty doesn't require pretending that life is perfect.

Sometimes beauty is the thing that makes us willing to look at something difficult.

And then there is color.

This is where my own interpretation becomes particularly personal.

I love color unapologetically.

Deep pinks. Turquoise. Golden yellow. Coral. Green. Unexpected flashes of violet.

I am not particularly interested in creating a quieter world on canvas than the one I see around me.

I want color to participate in the emotion of a painting.

Sometimes the color is joyful. Sometimes sensual. Sometimes nostalgic. Sometimes almost defiant.

It is another way of saying:

Look at this.

This moment mattered.

This flower mattered.

This person mattered.

This ordinary little piece of life was worth noticing.

Maybe we still need Romanticism.

The original Romantics lived through enormous social and cultural change. Their response was to insist that human feeling, imagination and our relationship with the natural world still mattered.

More than two centuries later, I understand the impulse.

Contemporary Romanticism, at least as I practice it, isn't an attempt to recreate nineteenth-century painting.

It's taking something valuable from it and carrying it forward.

Emotion over indifference.
Wonder over familiarity.
Beauty without apology.
Meaning hidden inside ordinary things.

My paintings don't ask you to escape your life.

I'd rather they make you look more closely at the life already happening around you.

Because sometimes the beautiful thing isn't somewhere else.

Sometimes it's sitting on your kitchen table.

Sometimes it's growing outside your window.

Sometimes it's hiding underneath the laundry.

And sometimes we simply need to take a moment long enough to see it.