In Magnolia, Tyler Ormsby renders the fleeting presence of a flower with quiet gravity. Two blossoms—a pale, opening magnolia and a darker violet bloom—float within a field of deep, earthen red. The background, textured and atmospheric, feels less like a setting than a pulse of space, compressing the image into a shallow plane where light and pigment seem to breathe together.

Ormsby’s touch is deliberate yet soft, his colors built through layers of muted violets, browns, and greens that dissolve into one another like remembered forms. The petals are less painted than revealed—edges blurred, their outlines fading into shadow. There’s a sense of both emergence and decay, as if the flowers hover between full bloom and dissolution.

The composition carries an almost devotional stillness. Its rhythm—between the two blossoms, the scattered circles of light, and the branching stems—suggests a meditation on impermanence. In Ormsby’s hands, the magnolia becomes not a symbol but a state of awareness: a fleeting moment held in balance between light and darkness, between the seen and the felt.