Black and White Tipped Flower captures the tornadoes, black earth, and tenacious animal energy of the Piney Woods of southeast Texas. Surls grew up in a house that his father built, and his art comes out of a lifetime of working with hand tools and ​“making do.” He believes that everything he creates is both a self-portrait and an image of the land that shaped him. Flower is scary and comical, an animal-plant-man-creature rising from the thickets and looking for a mate. It calls to mind Surls’s goal to be ​“a hump-backed beast with golden hands,” unafraid to tap into the life-force of his home ground for images that tickle and terrify.

Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006