The Catalog and Stories Behind
Some of My Original Oil Paintings
Why I Paint Flowers
I create flowers in my studio because they supply me with so much intricacy of form, color, joy and wonder. I love their ruffles, their swirls. The way the color changes as the light graces their outer curves and when it delicately enters their inner recesses. I love the edges of petals, the flutings, the scallops, the way some petals are curved and others splayed.
I love the architecture of flowers, not just how they grow on their stems, their height, their leaves and their unique outward appearance. I love even more the inner architecture of their center parts, the configurations of their pistils and stamens, the anthers laden with pollen. I love their colors, the shading that changes often from morning through the day. I love the markings on them, each pattern having evolved to lure in their specific mating pollinators which ensure their survival. The subtleties, the dots, the splashes of color, the blending from one color to the other.
What tools do I use?
I love putting brushes to the canvas. I begin with large bristle brushes to create the underpainting and over time I find I’m using smaller and smaller and sometimes softer brushes as I move towards details as the painting begins to arrive. The shapes of brushes change as well from the straight flats to the splayed out shape of fans. These I use most frequently in the soft blending of colors by pushing and pulling paint with and against the bristles.
I also love the array of colored tubes of paint that I have to choose from. As a musician who used to practice my scales, these paints to me are like the notes on a piano. The layering, glazing and scumbling I do is akin to creating chords from individual musical notes. Each tiny variation in the amount of paint or the order in which I glaze resonates in a different way. One color pushes me to adjust the adjacent colors in order to create the perfect harmony.
Why I like Painting
The tactility of painting is important to me. I stand while I paint. It allows me to engage my entire body in the creation of my art. I bend and stretch while I’m reaching to edges of large canvases. With almost every stroke I step backward a few feet away from the canvas to view the harmony of my colors so I have constant movement as I work. The physicality of this type of paintings is quite harmonious with the stretching and bending of my outdoor work in the garden. Each are sloppy, sticky and messy in their own way.