Arte Floral

acuarela, tinta acrílica y botánicos reales secados y prensados: "Flamenco Rosa en Flor"

I shot the original image outside a massive warehouse for the largest food rescue and charity in Israel where literal tons of food is sorted and packed into boxes to be distributed to people of every walk of religion and of every walk of life. The warehouse I got to volunteer at last year while I was in Israel for a few weeks is about an hour or so outside of Tel Aviv. When we were leaving the warehouse to go back on the bus taking my group back to Tel Aviv where we were staying, there was a single but beautifully lush bush w these yellow flowers just growing on the side of what was otherwise a dirt road w a strip of pavement along the middle for vehicles to drive on to get to this warehouse. Back at home in the US a few months later I was looking at the photo I shot an playing around with it digitally and thinking about how complicated and how simple everything is over there, and how even in the midst of war over there with people running to bomb shelters in middle of the night bc the Houthis and/or Hamas were sending rockets our way, there is a sort of resilience— even if it is forced— bc while people talk about resilience as if there’s a choice, there really isn’t much of an alternative but to be resilient. So it becomes a sort of resilience from what is in many ways a broken place. You can still see the good in that resiliencel but it’s a little loopy and misshapen maybe bc there most often just aren’t any good choices.

#pivoines #peonies #floral

I am drawn to beauty that may be missed in our busy world and lives. Close-ups of florals can bring intense beauty.

Pencil and watercolor. 11 x 18 in. Just more like a sketch like watercolor. I love to paint flowers with watercolor. It is like flowers were created for watercolor painting.

The real subject here isn't the flowers but the light and the way it treats the flowers. There are varying shadows, reflected color and bright highlights. It was a smorgasbord.

When I'm feeling uninspired or don't know my next move, I do one of these whimsical florals. I've ended up being commissioned to do favorite flowers for a lot of my friends. I do more realistic florals too, but adding the stylistic black like and design work pretty much makes anything wonderful! Hahaha! (Happy accidents?!)

Three years ago in April I had brain surgery to correct a severe hand tremor. I hadn't been able to draw for the prior decade, so this was my first 'test piece' after. I'm exceedingly grateful for science, doctors and modern medicine.

Working on a new series of sunflowers

I always feel more excited to paint the glass vase than the flowers. Flowers are hard. Anyone have some tips?

It was meant to be a quick study but I ended up saying everything I wanted to say on the subject. Oil 10x8

Master pastelist Albert Handell told a much younger version of me that the background should be as important as the subject. For this 9x12 soft pastel "Garden Heartbeats" I used a light, impressionistic gouache underpainting in the background areas, then applied pastels selectively over that. I'm not such a purist to any medium that I won't use whatever works, and I like the mottled complexity combining mediums gave me here. First time for everything--but I'll do this technique again on florals. Thoughts on backgrounds for botanical art???

Watercolor and gouache on Arches