Katherine Sherwood’s lush depictions of human and botanical forms often incorporate medical imagery, including the artist’s own MRI brain scans. Her insightful depictions of disability and use of found material are further deepened by her ongoing homage to women artists of the seventeenth century Baroque period. Her series “Brain Flowers” borrows imagery from works by Maria van Oosterwyck, Maria Sybilla Marian, and Giovanna Garzoni, among others. Her interpretation of traditional vanitas paintings are twofold. Not only does she give new life to the work of women artists before her, who rarely received due recognition in their time, but she also speaks to the power of survival in the face of harsh certainties. Sherwood uses the genre’s historical language, wherein opulent floral arrangements and table scenes allude not just to the inevitability of death but to a more nuanced end. Ultimately, the incorporation of brain imagery lends these works a sense of transience. Sherwood is represented by Anglim Gilbert Gallery in San Francisco, Walter Maciel Gallery in Los Angeles, and George Adams Gallery in New York.