Shake Things Up

This painting started with a hot pink background. I knew that I wanted to portray a wildflower scene and I just kep adding shapes of flowers and leaves. The pale yellow flowers were the primary blooms with all other shapes supporting those..

High Key

Painting white flowers is often a challenge until you realize that they are anything but pure white. Of coutrse white paint is used but so are many other colors. Some are subtle as in the bloom itself and others are brighter in the background.This painting is titled High Key because the colors are mostly lighter values with the exception of a few dark to make the blossoms pop.

Never Enough

It is well past lilac season but I say there can never be enough lilacs or paintings of lilacs. I am glad for many reasons to be back in the south; mild winters being a major reason. Sadly , we are not the best climate for lilacs. I have heard a few urban myth sightings of lilac bushes down here but I have yet to see one. When we lived in Pennsylvania were lucky to live 2 miles from Longwood Gardens where the lilacs were intoxicating. I will never forget just standing in front of the bushes just taking in the sight and smell of them.

Feels Like Friday

I could paint one of these blue and white vases every day and never run out of a different pattern. They are so pleasing , especially when paired with  beautiful hydrangeas. They seem like they were made gor each other.

Introduction

As Paul  Simon said, there are 50 ways to leave your lover. Well, there are apparently more than 50 ways to paint hydrangeas in mason jars. I probably have painted more than that of many types of flowers in jars. I like the simplicity of the jars as a way to show the beauty of the flowers.

Make Me Wanna Holler

i was listening to Marvin Gay’s Inner City Bues and the lyric in the title came up and I knew it was perfect for the title of this painting. The colors seem to be alive and want to make some noise!

Want To Fall In Love

Drama is the name  of the game. I recently looked back on some watercolors of mine from about 20 years ago. There was nothing really wrong with them but to my mind they were a little BORING. I think I have finally learned that to be more dynamic a painting needs to kick it up a notch. That means make the darks a little darker, the lighte a little lighter, and the composition a little more unpredictable.

Blueprint

There is something calming about blue and white with blue hydrangeas. The cool and smooth vase with the formal pattern is a good backdrop for the textured flowers. Elegance is the buzzword for the day.

Geranium Conversation

These two pots seem to be having a conversation about something. Of course that is a fantasy, although plants are living , we know that they don’t have human attributes! But it is fun to imagine what they might be saying to each other if they could speak.

Flower Power

This  acrylic painting is quite a different style from many of my other paintings. It is a more modern appproach but in a way similar to the pop art paintings of the sixties a la Peter Max. For this kind of painting I did not have a subject to look at;it all came from my head. Of course my head has been filled for the last several decades with thousands of images of flowers so there was plenty of material to work with.

Geranium Convention

i like this outdoors view of a garden table of geranium pots.It is an arrangement set in sunlight near a garden showing a variety of sizes of pots although the colors are the same. Geraniums are a favorite of mine; they are a sturdy summer plant capabble of withstanding the summer heat.

In The Garden

This 36;x 48 painting may be part of the Botanic Garden Show. It is a walk through a garden or meadow, encountering the different plants and flowers along the way. I like a blend of abstract and realism- leaving some things to imagination.

Peak of Summer

I have been painting meadows and wildflower fields lately as a big picture theme. This painting takes  a close up view of the meadow type painting. The composition has as its focal point the larger red flower .The coloes reflect the warmth of a summer day.

Color Field

It is not just enough to paint the flowers when painting a meadow; it is important to try to show some movement. Most of the time there will be some wind blowing outdoors so the flowers would be moving.The way to do this is to show the flowers at different angles, the petals flipped up, etc.It is not always easy but worth trying.

Summer in the City

The temperature of a painting depends on the colors used in the painting. This painting has a warm tone because of the colors used. The yellows, reds and peaches contribute to the warm temperature of the painting. There are a few cool colors in the painting but they are only there to serve as a balance to the warmth.

Iris Flight

I worked on this painting a few times before I was satisfied with it.I just couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it until I finally realized it was too much of a good thing. There were too many flowers in the picture! I removed some of the iris, added more green-and it gave the eye more rest. I like to put a painting up to live with it a few days so I can think about what I like and don’t like about the painting. This one passes the test now.

You’ll Be On My Mind

Rhythm is one of the principles of design. In this composition the sunflower’repetition creates rhythm throughout the composition. The way they are arranged in the picture plane keeps the viewer’s eye traveling around the picture plane without going outside the painting.

Sunny Whites

Totally opposite to the recent colorful paintings posted is this more monochromatic painting. Limited to mostly white , yellow and green; there are enough variations of the colors to seem like more. This painting is a large 36 x36 inch painting. The white tulips are the star of the show!

Beauty Portfolio

The colors in thos painting are just so pleasing to me. I like a subtle palette but the bright colors are exciting. There are enough neutrals here to offer some rest from the vibrant tones. I think my favorite is the orange lily. A good rule of composition is to keep the eye moving around in the picture plane without going out.

Along for the Ride

I have a hard time deciding which color of hydrangea I like best. The blues and purples are thrilling to me, especially when they are both on the same bush but I think the white could be my favorite.I especially like them when they have a lot of green in the blooms. They look beautiful when paired with aqua mason jars
. I think I could paint these every day!

What You Really Really Really Want

Our whole family went on our annual beach vacation in early June. Our grandchildren usually put on a play or some kind of show on our last day at the beach. This year they decided to put on a talent show this year. The girls did a lip sync performance to the Spice Girls’ song What you Want.
When I painted this painting of hydrangeas that song just popped into my head.

Peak of Summer

I love painting a big bouquet of summer flowers. It becomes an intuitive process, not trying to get every petal and leaf in the precise location. I know painters who can’t stray from the realism but that just gives me a headache. Sometime a flower just looks better in the composition a little higher and to the left. Instead of physically moving it ,I just move it in my head. I think that might be hard for a beginning painter but since I have been doing art in some form for 60 years- not as hard!

Penny Lane

The title of this painting (12x12) is Penny Lane. It pays homage to the Beatles. We watched an episode of Carpool Karaoke with James Corden that featured Paul Mc Cartney. It took place in Liverpool and they drove by Penny Lane and the home Paul lived in as a teenager. This painting evokesa feeling of the music of that era for me.

Soft Surroundings

This  painting is more about texture instead of color. The pink is vibrant but pretty monochromatic. The star of the painting is the contrast between the texture of the flowers, the pot and the ribbon.The ribbon seems to be three dimensional and of a totally different texture than the flowers despite being almost the same color.

In Plain Sight

This painting started out as a meadow painting and quickly turned abstract. It became more about the shapes and colors instead of the actual flowers. The title comes from a television show that was on a few years ago about federal marshalls assigned to witness protection in Albuquerque. A friend was visiting New Mexico while I was painting this and mentioned online that they were taking a Breaking Bad tour.This led me to think about the tv show and the title somehow seemed perfect for this painting. This explains in part how I come up with my unorthodox method of naming paintings. After naming over a thousand paintings , my method seems to work all right!

We Just Got Here

There is a Carly Simon song about the end of summer that is titled We just Got Here. It talks about how quickly the end of summer comes for everyone. Of course here in the South it lasts well into September . These flowers are here for a short time, though. They will last about a week and then will ned to be replaced. Nothing lasts forever,

Light Year

Zinnias are in my top five favorite flowers. Who am I kidding - my top five is much bigger than five! I love the way the petals sre layered and the flowers are so sturdy. They are perfectly informal in a bucket but can be beautiful in silver or crystal. They are the stars of summer.

Reach for the Sky

I tried to show some movement in this arrangement of flowers by having the blooms literally moving off the page— seeming to reach up to the sky. They are basically the same color of pink but the variatios occur because of the change in light and shadow. This makes them seem to move whilemaking the whole painting more interesting.

Fresh Fields

a landscape gives more opportunity to show depth than a still life or floral painting. There is a clear definition between foreground, middleground and background. I like the way the flowers take you through  from the front to the back.

Big Day

It is easy to pick out the center of interest in this painting- of course the large sunflower. Although there is something to be said for the bright white in the bottom of the vase. The brightest spot can also be the center too. A good painting will take the eye of the viewer on a trip all around the painting though;hopefully without an exit. Kind of like Hotel California!