"White Lilacs and Silver Dollars" (watercolor; 8" x 8")

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This spring, whenever the sun shined, I gathered flowers from my garden.  I put them in different vases and took pictures.  When I combined white lilacs with magenta silver dollar flowers in a pink bowl, I was clearly inspired!

The Collage of My October 2015 Paintings

The collage of my October 2015 paintings

I was super productive last month until my accident!  Which painting is your favorite?  This month I will be probably busy with custom pet portraits for the holidays, but still intend to squeeze in a few watercolor florals.  Wish me luck!

"White Lilacs in Rose Vase" (watercolor; 6" x 6") sold

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I got excited by the watercolor floral still life on a white background that "Daffodil Sunshine" was all about.  So I looked for old pictures of similar setups that I had taken this spring and in the past years and found a whole bunch.  I am in business for a while!  How do you like this simple, yet, lovely bouquet of white lilacs in a dainty rose vase casting deep purple shadows in the spring sun?

"Lilac Basket" (watercolor on paper; 8" x 10")

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A basketful of lilacs under a lilac bush on green grass.  Ah, can you smell the perfumed air?

"White Lilacs and Narcissus" (oil on stretched canvas; 10" x 10" x 1 3/8")

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My days are busy keeping up with the fleeting beauty of spring flowers in my paintings, in addition to gardening and enjoying the weather!  I put white lilacs and narcissus from my garden in a painted porcelain vase and came up with this enchanting still life.  How active the background should be is the ongoing quest of mine this year; for this gentle still life, I went for a calm, smoky background.  By the way, painting lilacs is a kind of aromatherapy!

Dipping my feet in the cool creek water during the walk with my daughter. We seized the day!

Collage of My April Paintings

Collage of my April 2014 paintings

How do you like the collage of my April paintings?  I am afraid I didn't paint as often or as many as I usually do.  But there has been a huge development during the month.  While painting "Bluebells Heaven", I rediscovered the joy of pointillism, the technique that I used to play with at the very beginning of my artistic development.

"Evening Walk in Dublin" (mixed media, 14" x 10"; 1996)

"Maine Event" (mixed media, 14" x 20"; 2000)

A new way of expressing my vision has unleashed my artistic enthusiasm.  Every morning, I can't wait to start painting.  You will see many shimmering, "dotted" paintings in the coming months!

A new series of "Dotted Landscape"!

"Lilac Spring" (oil on linen; 12" x 12") sold

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There is something special about spring air.  It is not just warm.  It is also fragrant with lilac scent!

By the way, I am working in a series this year.  I already finished the first series of nine paintings without a theme.  I happened to have nine 8" x 10" stretched canvases, hehe!  

My first series of paintings this year

The second series in progress is called "I Love Color".  Each painting is devoted to a particular color.  For instance, "Poipu Beach Sunset" is a mauve painting; "White Garden", a white painting; "Big Sur Blue", a blue painting; and "Red Poppies", obviously a red one!  They are going to be all 12" x 16" paintings.

My second series in progress: "I Love Color"

"Lilac Spring" is the second painting in the third series, "Floral Squares".  This series will be all 12" x 12".    

My third series: "Floral Squares"

The idea behind my 2014 series is to work within a certain size and format, which will suggest its own possibilities and limitations.  I am also painting larger than the so-called "daily paintings", spending more time on each painting.  No more rushing to get a painting done so that I can move on to the next one.  Believe me, it has been exhausting.  I will have more time to reflect, putz around my garden, take a walk in a park, go to museums, and have a hot date with my husband.  I will have life again!

"Scent of Lilac" (watercolor on paper; 7" x 7") sold

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"Lilac Season" (oil, 11" x 14")
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Lilacs blooming in my garden

Lilacs are blooming in my garden.  It is unseasonably chilly this morning, but I went outside to take some pictures.  I love the lilac--its delicate florets, its colors, and above all, its scent!

"Scent of Lilac" (watercolor on paper; 7" x 7") sold

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I love the scent of lilac.  We used to have three small lilac bushes: white, purple, and violet.  Only the white one is still alive.  As long as I have their photo or, even better, "Scent of Lilac," I will always have my lilacs in my heart.

If you want to win a painting from my "Spring Fever" series at the end of the month, please sign in to follow my blog.  Thanks!

By the way, I would like to thank everybody who took trouble to sign up for my email newsletter.  I had to make the difficult choice to pick just one person.  The lucky winner of "Sprinkled Chocolate Donut" is R. Meyer.  Congratulations!  R. Meyer, please contact me with your address.  I will ship the painting right away!

"Lilac Season" (oil on linen; 11" x 14") sold

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Reference photo

Lilac is one of my favorite flowers.  Its subtle scent brings back sweet memories of my college days.  I went to Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea during the late 70's.  I chose my alma mater partly because of the beauty of its campus.  My liberal-arts college was housed in a stone building covered with Boston ivy.  Throughout the spacious campus, with an amphitheatre and several hills, bloomed lilac bushes every May.

Seoul, then and now, is a over-crowded metropolis where trees struggle to survive due to the bad air quality.  My family lived on a dusty, commercial street.  Throughout my childhood, I craved for greenery.  Imagine my joy when I first saw my college campus turning pastel, then green, in my freshman year.  (The Korean school calendar starts in March, a legacy of the Japanese colonization of the Korean peninsula.) 

But it is somehow the lilac flowers that remain most vivid in my memory.  It must be its fragrance.  The visceral sensations of color, taste, texture, or smell reside in our deepest, dearest memories, haunting us with their sweet and sad associations.  Why sad?  Because we can never go back to our childhood or youth.

"Spring Bouquet" (oil on linen; 10" x 8") sold

"Spring Bouquet"
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"From Spring Garden" (oil, 12" x 12")
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I painted "From Spring Garden" last spring after having taken Robert A. Johnson's still life workshop, excited at the realization that I could paint floral still lifes in oil.  I picked out three favorite spring flowers from my garden, challenging myself with some with florets--lilac and hyacinth.  I did a few more still lifes, always tormented by the conflicted desire--shall I go outside to paint flowers on such a beautiful day or stay put in my studio to learn to set up and paint still lifes?  The pleasure of companionship of fellow plein-air painters usually won out.  By late fall, the pickings from my garden were slim. Japanese anemones were the best I could do; "White Japanese Anemone" was the result.

"White Japanese Anemone" (oil, 12" x 10")
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I love flowers with multiple tiny florets. Think lilac, cherry, hyacinth, hydrangea, etc. They are hard and intimidating to paint though.  It is funny that I used the word "intimidating."  How can anybody be intimidated by such small and lovely things?  But I do.  That is why I had printed out the reference photo for "Spring Bouquet" last spring, but never got around to paint from it.  The familiar delay tactics, if you know what I mean.

Spring is just around the corner in northern Virginia, with the temperature in the 50's day after day in late January!  I finally got inspired to paint "Spring Bouquet."  The setup on the kitchen table in front of a large window was backlit by the natural light from outside.  I got rid of the window panes and trees clearly visible in the picture, and painted the daffodil first.  After taking a deep breath, I began to paint gesturally the floret of hyacinth one by one.  It went surprisingly fast!  Many initial rough-edged brushstrokes were left alone to suggest movement.  After all, the hyacinths were alive and would have moved follwing light if I had painted them from life.  I let the painting dry a little, then refined the flowers and wobbly stems in the vase. How about that!  No reason to get stymied by flowers anymore.

I took a picture of snowdrops blooming in my garden yesterday.  Do you think I will paint them soon, or sit on the picture for a year?

"From Spring Garden" (oil on linen, 12" x 12") sold

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This still life has three quintessential spring flowers; two of them--hyacinth and lilac--are fragrant and all three are my favorite flowers.  I have tried still life in watercolor in the past, but have found it difficult.  Sometimes I would set up floral arrangements, stare at them for a while and give up even without trying.  Especially, with the flowers with many florets like hyacinth, lilac, and hydrangea, it seemed too daunting. 

So I was being very brave when I sat down to paint "From Spring Garden."  As somebody said, die trying.  And I never heard of anybody dying while painting some flowers.  Guess what!  It wasn't that hard to paint either lilac or hyacinth.  I guess it's because oil is a forgiving medium and, as long as the paints are still wet, you can manipulate them to suggest the gesture and characteristics of different flowers.

Another concern that I had about floral still life was "what happens if the flowers die on me before I am done?".  Although it took two sessions to finish the painting above on two consecutive days, none of the flowers changed too drastically to force me to abandon the project.  I am very much encouraged with my new-found passion of still life painting and am going to go shopping for more fabrics.  Did I tell you that I sew sometimes and love to go to fabric stores?  My art just gave me a good excuse!