"Pink Peony Garden" (oil on linen; 7" x 7") sold

 sold

Peonies are, in my opinion, one of the most joyous flowers.  The flowers captured in my painting have just started opening.  They will keep unfurling until the heads become so heavy that they will droop to the ground.  Such abundance, such profusion, such lavishness!

This fits my current mood too, as I continue to recover from shingles and feel like myself again despite the throbbing pain that comes back at night.  The weather in northern Virginia has been unseasonably mild.  The potted geraniums out by my front door are still blooming.  I am in a mild state of spring fever!  In last December I was in the mood for painting autumnal and snow scenes.  Not anymore.  I want to paint spring flowers!

"Luscious Yellow Roses" (oil on linen; 7" x 7") sold

sold

I have painted these yellow roses before from a photo. Is that bad of me?  This time I tried to apply a year's worth of learning to the new painting.  The lighting was a cool, natural light.  So the highlights were painted cool; shadows, warm.  I also used more paints and colors.  Someday I will create a painting of roses so powerful that it will cause the viewer's heart to skip a beat.  In the meanwhile, this will do.

"Yellow and Peach Roses" (oil, 8" x 10")
sold

"Pink Rose and Hips" (oil on linen; 10" x 8") sold

sold

I have been busy, setting up my Etsy shop.  Since there are only so many hours a day, I ended up not painting at all for the last several days!  The advice people give to the online art entrepreneurs (wow, it sounds impressive!) is that you have to spend 50% of your time on painting, the other 50% on marketing.  Yup, it is incredible, isn't it?  As a book title says, I would rather be in my studio.  But one has to get oneself visible.  Sigh.

"Autumn Colors" (oil on linen; 8" x 6") sold

"Autumn Colors"
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Still life setup

A good thing about painting still lifes is that I have a complete control over the subject matter and lighting.  If I choose fruits and vegetables, I get to eat them afterwards.  Flowers will adorn my house after posing for me as long as they are long-lasting kinds.  I learned the tricky business of painting fickle flowers hard way last year, when I tried to paint pink parrot tulips from my garden.  I ended up finishing the largish painting from a photograph, which I think negated the purpose of painting a still life from life!

"Pink Parrot Tulips" (oil, 20" x 16")
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So the yellow mum, a very long-lasting flower, was a wise choice for a still life of autumn colors.  The small Hubbard pumpkin with the most enchanting pinkish orange color alone would have made a painting, but in order to make it more companionable, I also picked up delicious, multi-colored, cherry tomatoes.  How about getting all the "ingredients" for my painting at a grocery store! 

The gold ribbon was added for a graceful flow between the foreground tomatoes and the background mum.  I cannot believe that I managed to paint this rather ambitious arrangement in such a small canvas!

"Rose Arbor" (oil on linen, 12" x 16") sold

sold

Reference photo

No, I didn't paint the picture outside.  In this heat?  No way!  A friend of mine who painted with me at Green Spring Gardens Park on Tuesday ended up in a hospital emergency room.  Please drink plenty of water and stay cool.

I took the reference photo at River Farm in Alexandria, VA exactly a month ago, and started the painting soon after.  But lots of things happened since; it got put aside.  Once the excitement is gone, it's hard to get back to that place.  Since leaving something unfinished goes against my "I am not a quitter" philosophy, however, I managed to complete "Peach Roses." 

As we are getting into the green-green-everywhere-green season, a landscape painter's task is to learn to mix many shades of greens--warm, cool, intense, grayed, dark, pale, etc.  I pushed back the distant pergola and the rest of  the right side of the painting by using lots of grayed violets.  For that reason, the painting is much easier to read than the photo, which tends to flatten space.  Now I am done with the darned thing, I can paint something else.  Yeah!

"Rose Arbor" (oil on linen, 8" x 10")

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It was in the low 70's a few days ago, and I got excited about an early spring, especially after I spotted snow drops blooming in my garden.  I shouldn't have.  We are back to winter today and I am back to day-dreaming about a mild spring weather in which I can paint outside.

I have been to George Washington's River Farm in Alexandria, VA many times, and every time I was enchanted by this scene with a series of brick pergolas.  The day when I painted the piece last year was my lucky day with perfect light and roses in bloom.  The roses were pink, but I changed them to white.  Why not?  It seemed to work better that way.  By the way, "Rose Arbor" is one of my favorite plein air paintings.

"Lotus Season" (watercolor on paper; 12" x 8")

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Every summer, when the lotus season comes around, I head to the waterlily pond at the Green Spring Gardens Park in Alexandria to greet these glorious flowers.  The sun was high when I took the reference photo and the flowers and huge leaves all glowed with translucency.  Initially, I left the background white, but it didn't work.  When I dropped the dark, granulating paints and allowed them mingle on the paper, the painting began to glow!

"Geraniums in Hanging Basket" (oil on linen; 7" x 5") sold

sold

Although it's a decent weather and Thursday, one of my plein-air painting days, I stayed put and painted this piece.  In my garden, a hanging basket with geranium flowers is still going strong in last November, as if it is defying the inexonerable march of seasons.  All around are trees that are becoming increasingly bare.  Soon the summer will be only a memory.