"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!

"Purple Irises in the Sun" (oil on linen; 4" x 5") sold

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I realized that all of my iris paintings were done in a portrait, i.e., vertical, format.  It is not surprising, as that is how irises grow--tall and majestic.  I decided to challenge myself to paint a horizontal iris painting.  The dark reds and greens in the background make this small painting pulsate with heat!

"Purple Beauties" (watercolor on Yupo; 10" x 8") sold

matted size: 14" x 11"
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I have painted these purple irises from my garden many times before--in watercolor on paper, in oil on linen, in different sizes, etc.--all of them sold, of course.  I just love them so much!  This time, it is watercolor on Yupo, because I wanted to see whether I would be able to paint such a complicated subject on Yupo.  In the process I made an important discovery.

After the flowers and spiky leaves were done, I sprayed the workable fixative on the painting.  This fixative protects the artwork, but allows the artist to continue to work on the support. Would the finicky Yupo take the spray too, as even a bit of grease from fingers makes it impossible to move paints around on the darned "paper"?  I experimented on a small unpainted piece of Yupo before this drastic action, but you never know.

To my relief, I was able to manipulate the background wash without worrying about "melting" the finished subject.  The dark dramatic background has the effect of making the backlit flowers pop out.  By chance, the top portion happened to dry a little lighter, mimicking the sunlight from the sky.  I am loving my Yupo explorations, pushing the boundaries, going where I have never gone before.  It's like "Star Trek"!

"Lavender Patch by the Barn" (oil on linen; 9" x 12")

click here to buy

"Lavender Patch by the Barn" was painted last summer during the plein-air painting workshop with Bobbi Pratte at Fairfield, PA. It had been an exceptionally hot spring AND hot summer last year.  Regardless of the sweltering heat at the lavender fields of Willow Pond Farm, we painted away, sweating profusely.

After the morning session and a nice luncheon buffet, the workshop participants were supposed to rest and take a siesta.  Did I?  Of course not.  I noticed a lavender patch by the barn glowing in the afternoon sun.  I sat down under a big tree and painted the scene.  I worked on it in my studio later in the summer to the current glory.  I am quite pleased with this painting, and that is why I am sharing it again for Leslie's challenge.

Anyhow, when the class met for the late afternoon session, I was pooped out.  Did I rest?  What do you think?  I painted again!  In two days, I produced five paintings all together, breaking the class record.  Here is what I learned from my experience.  DON'T OVERDO IT!  I was so burned out that I didn't go out to paint again for the rest of the year.

"Purple Glory" (watercolor on paper; 20" x 14") sold

click here to buy a print

This may be the best iris painting I have ever done.  It just glows!  It received the Best in Show award in the Potomac Valley Watercolorists' Green Spring Show in 2007.  It is no longer available, but you can still purchase a small print.

By the way, I started selling prints of some of my paintings.  Please click here if you want to check out my print shop.  Thanks!

"Wisteria House" (watercolor on paper; 20" x 14") sold

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The white manor house at George Washington's River Farm in Alexandria, VA gets draped with purple wisteria flowers every spring.  It is a sight to look forward to, and I rarely miss it.  I once painted wisterias on a red-brick house.  Boy, the painting looked ugly.  Wisterias and a white house are like hydrangeas and a white picket fence.  They enhance each other, making the charm of the flowers and backdrops multiply by many times!

"Wisteria Song" (watercolor on paper; 7" x 5") sold

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A graceful spray of wisteria with petite, late-blooming daffodils makes an exquisite spring bouquet.  What do you say?

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!

"Memories of Spring" (watercolor on paper; 17" x 8" each) sold

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matted size: 24 x 24"

When you love irises so much, you have to paint them big and in diptych!  These majestic purple irises sadly died out in my garden.  All I have are the memories.  So, in a way, the painting is the reminder of the ephemeral nature of life.  I am feeling philosophical.

"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!

"Backlit Purple Irises" (watercolor on paper; 14" x 8") sold

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I painted these purple irises from my garden many times.  Ah, the glory of iris!  The matted size is 20 x 14".

"Lavender Fields on a Summer Afternoon" (oil on linen; 8" x 10") sold



"Lavender Fields on a Summer Afternoon" (after)
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"Lavender Fields on a Summer Afternoon" (before)

The scenery captured in "Lavender Fields on a Summer Afternoon"

"Fair Lavender Fields" (oil, 11" x 14"; after)

"Fair Lavender Fields" (before)

The scenery for "Fair Lavender Fields"

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you may remember my experience during the lavender workshop with Bobbi Pratte in June.  Well, it's been a month and a half since the unforgettable workshop and I have completely recovered from painting six paintings in two days!  I felt up to revisiting these paintings to see what I could do to make them sing.

Although nothing beats the freshness of alla-prima paintings done on location, the truth is that they are not always the best work an artist is capable of.  There is so much pressure--heat, bugs, fatigue, limited time, etc.--that if you capture the essence of the scene, you should give yourself a pat on the shoulder and do a little victory dance. 

I uploaded the photos of the sceneries I captured in the paintings above to show you how I edited things while painting on site.  I didn't just slavishly copy what was in front of me, did I?  So much thinking goes on while painting that one feels exhausted just for the brain exercise!

Now, back in my air-conditioned studio, no longer sweating like a pig and about to pass out of heat exhaustion, and instead in full control of my faculties, I could clearly see what was working and what could be improved.  I didn't change much of the composition in either painting.  But colors are richer and there are lots and lots of texture!  Both paintings now sing LAVENDER, don't they?

By the way, painting lavender fields of Pennsylvania got me thinking.  Why not go to Provence and paint acres and acres of lavender fields?  Why not?  Or, as the French say, pourquoi pas?

"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.

"Glorious Irises" (oil on canvas; 24" x 18") sold

"Glorious Irises"
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"Purple Irises" (oil, 12" x 9")
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"Purple Glory" (watercolor, 20" x 14")
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Yup, you are right.  All three paintings above are based on the same photo reference.  I am guilty of copying myself.  "Purple Glory" came first, painted many years ago when I was a watercolorist.  It got an award, then got sold in another show.  Last year, I did a smaller version in oil--"Purple Irises"--and sold it on eBay.  A client of mine who saw it on my website wanted it blown up.  So I painted "Glorious Irises" for him.  What can I say?  Some compositions are so darn great that they deserve to be revisited several times.

Whenever I look at the image of "Purple Glory," I feel a pang and regret that I don't paint watercolors any more.  But the regret doesn't last long.  These days I find watercolors tedious.  One has to draw the composition very carefully with a pencil in fear of marring the paper. When glazing, one has to wait each time for the previous layer to dry completely.  Most importantly, one has to preserve the lights with absolute determination. 

When a watercolor painting works, it glows.  When it goes awry, there is not much one can do.  The medium tends to collect fanatical devotees who look at other mediums with a thinly-disguised contempt, because only the most disciplined artists can stick to it.  I have such friends.  (I hope they are not reading this blog entry; I still like them despite their stubbornness.)  I also have friends who had hit the wall and wandered to find other, I dare say, more fun, mediums. 

Despite what many people believe, oil paints can be transparent as well as opaque.  (Watercolors can be opaque too, but only up to a point.)  To me, the fun of painting in oil lies in playing with this dual characteristics of the oil medium, plus its tactile quality.  In "Glorious Irises," I didn't leave the dark background transparent, because I thought it might not stand up to the strong, sculptural presence of the back-lit irises.  Ordinarily, I play transparent areas against opaque ones, lathering thick globs of paints on highlights, highly-textured petals, and so on.  Oh, the glory of oil painting!

"Purple Irises" (oil on linen; 12" x 9") sold

"Purple Irises"
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"Purple Glory" (watercolor, 20" x 14")
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I have painted these majestic purple irises from my garden many times, but never get tired of them.  Sadly they died out.  So, in a way, the paintings are a reminder of the ephemeral nature of life.  "Purple Glory" had received the Best in Show award in the Potomac Valley Watercolorists Green Spring Show in 2007 and got sold in a solo show at the NIH in Bethesda, MD.

I missed the painting, so decided to do another version, this time in oil.  They are quite different, aren't they?  The watercolor version is bigger and more "detailed" or "refined" than "Purple Irises."  I paint oils in the alla prima way--that is, finish the painting in one session.  This method requires a truly full concentration, as each stroke matters.  There is an urgency and immediacy that cannot be achieved in the more traditional indirect painting method. 

You may prefer the watercolor painting, but as my aesthetics have evolved, it now feels too detached.  I don't feel the presence of the artist who worked furiously to get the irises just right.  As a watercolorist, I think, I was reluctant to reveal myself and get in the way of the viewer's appreciation of the subject.  What do you think?

"Sun-Kissed Iris" (oil on linen; 10" x 8") sold

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Lately I have been re-reading Mark Christopher Weber's Bold Strokes: Dynamic Brushwork for Oils and Acrylics, which had got me into water-mixible oils in the first place a couple of years ago.  I thought I could use a reminder from him that I should be more decisive and energetic in my brushstrokes instead of being timid and overworked.  I did a preparatory value drawing, got the board ready, and generally diddled.  Afraid to be bold and decisive.  You've been there.

Eventually--about two hours later--I started painting.  Calculating that it might turn out to be a total flop, I was using a linen piece with another drawing on it; I covered it up with a burnt sienna wash.  Thanks to Weber, I even used, for the background mixture, raw umber--a color so reminiscent of the product of a certain bodily function that I avoid like plague.  I didn't fiddle; I really tried to be economical in brushstrokes. 

Once I got going, it took an hour from the start to the finish!  Wow.  The painting glows.  Is it because of the burnt sienna wash (who would have thought it would work for a purple flower)?  Or is it the strong value contrast?  I even like the raw umber/ultramarine background color.  There is really something to trying new things, pushing oneself beyond a comfort zone.  I am also happy to be back to daily paintings.