"Spring Rock Garden" (oil on linen; 8" x 10")

click here to buy

I just came back from the five-day workshop with Gregory Packard in Richmond, VA. As you may remember, I took another workshop two weeks ago with Dreama Tolle Perry, which blew me away.  What can I say?  I got blown away for the second time in a month.  It is exciting and bewildering to be esthetically challenged by two totally different approaches to painting.  So it will take some time for me to digest what I have learned this past month and make it part of my own esthetics.  I will share what I got out of the workshop with Greg in next several posts.  

The first thing I must say is that Greg Packard is a nice guy.  He is young in his late 30's and has already garnered fame and success that many artists would love to achieve but don't necessarily do.  You wouldn't know this by talking to him because he is such a down-to-earth and modest person.  But what about his art? He is famous for his gloriously vibrant floral still lifes.  Happily for the workshop participants, he did a demo of a peony painting on the first day.

Before the demo, however, he showed us how to mix grays.  Yes, grays turned out to be the secret to his art.  If you can mix lovely grays, you can create lovely paintings. That is Greg Packard's bottom line.

He squeezed out loads of paint onto his large palette.  Don't be stingy with paints.  He actually used an entire large tube of white paint for the demo painting!  We were awe-struck as he finished a dazzling 20" x 16" painting in just two hours.  And he did so by starting out with mid-tone grays.  He reserved the lights, darks, and bright colors until the last stage of the painting.  I have never seen anybody painting like this!

After the lunch break, it was our turn to paint.  I was so intimidated by the demo that I had a hard time getting started.  I picked the photo of a rock garden with phlox and sedum, mixed my own grays, and came up with "Spring Rock Garden."  Greg was profuse with praise.  What do you think of my "gray" painting?  

"Pink Phlox" (oil on linen; 8" x 10") sold

sold

Yesterday morning, I took a walk at the Green Spring Gardens Park in Alexandria, VA. It has been crazy busy this year, so it was my first visit to the park.  Ah, I could breathe deeply.  I wish you were there with me.  It was sunny and mild.  There were just a few people around.  We all smiled and said good morning to each other.

For someone who likes to paint flowers, spring can be exhausting.  Flowers come upon each other like torrential rain.  How do I keep up with them?  The secret to the true enjoyment of this vernal floral glory is letting go.  I can't paint them all.  Enjoy the sunshine and breeze; bring some flowers inside and put them in a pretty vase; above all, don't forget to smell their enchanting fragrance.  If I miss some, there will be always another spring.

The rock garden in full bloom; from this angle, one can see both the gazebo and Manor House.

Spring wildflowers along the Virginia native plant trail

Holmes Run runs through the park.

A fake great blue heron at the pond

"Pink Phlox" (oil on linen; 8" x 10") sold

sold

Original state, then titled "Rock Garden Phlox"

I am feeling better.  Yeah!  Yesterday I cleaned up my studio, then went through my photo stash looking for inspiring pictures for about two hours.  My stamina wasn't yet quite up to speed unfortunately, so I took a rest and decided to work on an old painting instead of starting from scratch.

"Rock Garden Phlox" is a year-old painting, which I once thought was one of the best florals I have ever done.  Well, that was then.  The tiny florets of the phlox, which I had found blooming at the rock garden at Green Spring Gardens Park in Alexandria, VA, were actually cool pink, not warm pink as in the original state.  I wanted more paint on the painting.  After all, these things are called oil paintings, not oil washes, right?  I also thought that I could strengthen the feeling of light striking a few petals and dead stems here and there.

So I got to work.  An hour and a half later, I came up with "Pink Phlox."  What do you think?