Floral Paintings

The backyard garden of a long time friend, this colorful setting was created with her co-owner – a woman who had contracted and died of cancer. The variety of pink and lavender flowers were some of her friend’s favorite colors and species, and together with the bird bath were also memorial symbols of renewal and recollection in this peaceful place.

Executed on a large scale suitable for a demo audience, the elements were positioned to convey a viewer’s implied action.

The complex design of a single blossom was challenge enough for this more detailed alla prima study of a large sunflower. The compliments of yellow and violet and green played off one another to compatible effect.

Morning glories are a special flower, lush with color, blossoms, and greenery. Capturing the short-lived purple petals required careful study but swift execution; some aspects of both may have been achieved in this deeply-hued piece.

The remarkable and delicate lily blossom is a perennial, not only in the garden but as subject for artists. The amazing petal patterning and emerging buds, set in deep purple glass, comprise the diagonal dynamics of this small work.

Enjoying Earth’s Spring renewal, this gardener & artist set a variety of jonquils and daffodils in a cool blue vase at a window, for a studied disciplined palette of hues and values. It was not unlike an earlier version with sunflowers.

As a graphic and color study of the curved form of a single spring jonquil, the flower’s brilliant yellow field prompted this color experiment, applying a striking complimentary outline to vibrate and intensify the hue of the petals.

A controlled exercise in color finessing variants of vibrant hues, from my ongoing fascination with Nature’s color, form and complexity of flowers.

An effusive study of the bursting shapes and vibrant analogous colors of cosmos, stasis and lavender amid greenery, contrasted by a suggestive warm glow of summer.

A segment of an abundant bouquet, this grouping of unfurling rosebuds was a study in various red hues and intensities. The pleasure of painting them barely exceeded the pleasure of their subtle scent. Painting six is not the same as painting one…

Multiple sunflower blossoms, a favorite subject, were cut from a stand I planted in a nearby public square. Selected for their different sizes, seed head colors and degrees of flowering, their arrangement was set and drawn for a demo at a Utrecht’s store.

Arranged in a tinted blue vase, this exuberant bouquet of vibrant homegrown sunflowers on an oak table in front of a sunny window was so strikingly bright, it highlighted the table’s surface, while back lighting the flowers and leaves.