Peony Bud, oil on gessoboard, 8 x 8 in.
Available for purchase, $350.00
I have been photographing many things in the garden this spring, and I've been wanting to do a small series of paintings featuring simple flower elements. My goal is to bring something to the painting that I can't capture in a photograph, yet I want these to be luminous, detailed, with lots of contrast and stark, graphic shapes.
The first successful one of these is this white peony bud. Peonies are one of my favorite garden flowers, yet they are so short-lived. Cutting a few and putting them in a vase results in a shower of petals on the table a day or two later. I love the look of peony flowers just before they have opened up--the perfect roundness of the bud, it is such a solid shape, before it opens into a marvelously perfumed, delicate voluminous flower.
Flower paintings aren't the only thing different about this summer. I'm calling this the year of trying new things...from participating in a local theater production, to doing the bicycling leg for a relay team in a sprint triathalon.
The horse paintings are not completely in the background. I currently have on the easel an 18 x 36 in. oil of some working draft horses. There is a lot of fussy harness work on this piece, and I have been picking away at it for a few months now.
There is probably another couple of weeks of fussing ahead of me. I really don't like it when paintings drag on for this long, and when they do, they either get abandoned or I finally reach the point where I just have to knuckle down and finish them. This one has far too much going for it to abandon. And now, there are some more brass rivets that need my attention.
