As an avid perennial gardener, I am intimately acquainted with flowers, their colors, textures, personalities… I strive to convey their liveliness through a mashup between impressionism and expressionism. Flowers are friends!
As an avid perennial gardener, I am intimately acquainted with flowers, their colors, textures, personalities… I strive to convey their liveliness through a mashup between impressionism and expressionism. Flowers are friends!
Once again, I return to the motif of a field of sunflowers. This time, I didn’t want to focus in closely on the personality of a few but the communal aspect of them all dwelling together! I just love sunflowers. 2018 24” x 30” oil on cradled wood panel. $700 available for purchase.
When I paint, it is prayer for me. I generally don’t listen to any music, there are no distractions. Sometimes I am surprised by what is prayed through me as I paint. Such was the case for Skyflowers.
Initially it was meant to be a giant swath of unbridled enthusiastic sunflowers, stretching across the canvas as they do the fields. I undertook this endeavor just a few days before Lent. Some people ‘give up something’ for Lent. I want to ‘take on’ a practice with intentionality. On the official first day of Lent, Valentine’s Day this year, after spending the day engaged in Ash Wednesday services and imposing ashes, delivering ashes-to-go in the public square, I came home to news of the shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL.
As I painted, the waves of grief washed over me. Sunflowers was transformed into Skyflowers over the next several weeks - a prayer of lament. Each unique flower which began rooted to the earth in the lush greens below detached and floated upwards towards the ethereal deep indigo heavens. As I paint, it is like a call and response from the Spirit. Guided. Unplanned. Responsive.
When I felt it was done, and was explaining to my husband, the weight I felt while painting it, the subconscious dialogue of prayer; he asked me if I had counted the flowers. Of course not, that’s a linear logical left brain thing to do which doesn’t happen in my studio! So we counted them. And then I just cried. 17.
April 2018. 5 ft. x 4 ft. plus frame.
Chaperoning my daughter’s elementary field trip many years ago to the Shaker Plantation at Hancock, MA I was in awe of the beautiful seemingly endless sea of Sunflowers stretching across the fields. Their heads hung heavy with the ripening seed and the bees were busy indeed on this warm Autumn day. I love everything about them!!! 18” x 24” 2006 sold.
This lively expressive Sunflower best describes my friend who has since moved a long distance away. 2007 5” x 3” gift.
These joyful sunflowers celebrated the Holy Union between Betsy and Liz. The Episcopal Church had approved this pastoral rite and it was a very special sacred moment for this blessed couple and their faith community. 2006 oil on canvas. 8x10. gift.
This piece was an effort to capture the fleeting movement of butterflies moving through the garden while I’m working among the perennials. The light is flickering along the path and the colors leap and dance as the stems nod and bend. This is a symphony for the sense. Swirling palettes, fragrant aromas, birds and butterflies abounding! An abstract approach was the only possible option here. And you may notice through careful observation that the monarchs in this scene are mating, which they were! However, to be truthful, where I live in Zone 4, Bougainvillea can’t survive as it’s a tropical plant. But being the spiritual, Trinitarian-minded believer that I am, I couldn’t help but incorporate the beautifully Trinitarian formed blossoms of this flower. And the colors of magenta and purples are among my favorites - if such a thing is possible. In fact, I usually say that my favorite color is the rainbow, thereby covering all my options!
Near where I used to live, I traveled frequently past the Mohawk Orchards on Route 2 in Western, MA. The day I intended to paint this beautiful scene, with all the blossoms fully loaded on the trees, there was a downpour! Sad but true. Most of the beautiful white blossoms lay deposited on the ground. But that’s where artistic license comes in handy!
I imagined a startling azure blue sky with sun drenched field. My focus landed on this contorted heavily laden tree in the foreground. She seemed magical and the whole scene was full of possibilities. 2014 oil on panel 20” x 24” framed. $500 sold.
I love all things purple!! And one of my favorite perennial friends is the Balloon Flower which is so named because as the blossom emerges it has a hot-air balloon shape. But I prefer to call it by its more distinctive and dignified Latin name “Platycodon”. This little gem is only 6” x 4” but the intensity of the lavenders and purples allowed it to contend among the bigger players in the field (literally and among the paintings on the gallery wall too).
A woman traveling from California came by my open studio in Brattleboro, VT during one of the first Friday gallery walks. She wanted to take home quite a few of my paintings but could only fit this wee one into her suitcase (she was leaving in the morning). 2007 oil on panel. sold.
For 24 years, I used to walk down this old dirt road and was always gratified to see the communities of Ladyslippers in early Spring, thriving along the edge near the woods. They reminded me of woodland scenes from my youth. So beautiful and wild.
This stunning hybrid Oriental Poppy inhabited my black and white perennial garden, along with black tulips, white anemones, “Chocolate Soldier” Columbine, various peonies and bridal bough.
The white petals had a translucency that reflected a rainbow of colors. Nestled among the dark green leaves with flickers of afternoon sun gilding edges, it was superb! I no longer live in Western MA where I built up this garden, and this friend didn’t make the move. But who knows? Maybe I’ll find it again someday and once again it will grace my gardens in all of its glory. 2015 oil on panel 22” x 17” sold.
Inspired by 19th c. French artist Gustave Caillebotte’s entitled work. Although it is tiny, all of 5” x 3”, this oil painting on panel, mounted on a larger toned ground and framed (overall 11” x 9”) requires that one step back to take it in. If you look closely, you can see the reddish brown vase I incorporated into it, reflecting on a deeply polished mahogany surface. The subject is vivacious and barely contained within its borders. 2007