Pucci's adept use of composition, form, color and texture are particularly abundant in his still life florals.

​

As any artist who explores a range of genres, Pucci's work lends itself to interpretation as singular works and yet, always calls to mind themes and elements from his larger visual corpus.

​

While still life paintings are often criticized as a genre lacking creative boldness, this viewpoint could only be offered by those unfamiliar with the life and language of flowers.

 

As with his depictions of fruit, Pucci's gentle realism displays mindfulness of accuracy but always hand-in-hand with an impressionist sensibility and never as a means of interposing his particular artistic lens in front of the innate language of his subjects.

 

Where Claude Monet achieves this in volume and grandeur in Vase of Flowers, and Chardin achieves via tension between darkness and light, Pucci speaks unobtrusively, via poetic tones and infusing visual content with the power of a 16 line sonnet as opposed to a multi-paged tome. In this sense, Pucci nods respectfully towards the eighteenth century zenith of still life works, but pulls the genre through the ethos and eyes of a twentieth century Brooklyn artist.

 

Flowers tell stories via their colors as well as being renowned for their unmistakably powerful impact on memory and mood via scent. Pucci's still life flowers take the route of gently evoking the story and memory within the flower, and similar to other greats, leading the viewer's eye not only along lines, hues of color and an almost plainspoken shading - as if these were not enough - he uses simplicity as he leaves emotional space for the beauty of remembering the scent and a deeper emotional connection, as if to lead the viewer to a visceral experience both old and new simultaneously.

 

True to his other works, Pucci suggests but never demands something deeper of his work (and audience). Instead, and in an unspoken nod to the power of his subject and the perceptions of his viewers, he lets the flower(s) speak in their own language to whatever end is natural within the viewer.

 

Working mostly with watercolors Pucci's floral still life works consistenly reach a balance between vibrancy and depth without ever 'speaking' too much or too loudly with unnecessary flourishes of technique or content for the sake of ego.

 

This, again is indicative of the pendulum quality of solitude and community in Pucci's works. 'Pink Roses' depicts a simple unity and yet, strikingly individual loneliness to each flower; exuding a power of depth in understated volume. Yet, his use of the color pink says everything about the work and indeed, the man, as the passions of red are tempered with the purity of white. Each is present; neither is dominating.

 

While contemporary culture views pink through the lens of cotton candy, bubble gum and babies - Pucci's flowers suggest nothing of frivolity, but instead a tenderness, dignity and love.

​

As the viewer regards each floral still life in the context of the language of color, the experience is less of looking at daisies, lilies, violets, carnations and irises and more of reading a well-composed poem where trust, immediacy, rest, optimism and mystery all intermingle in complimentary and sometimes contrasting statements about life.

​

As one regards Pucci's flower still life works, the unmistakable senses is this: where Albert Pucci may not have had words, he had colors - and these said everything needed.