Description
I had been doing an errand for my husband in late spring, dropping something by his friend Bill’s on Magnolia in San Anselmo. Uncle Bill, as we call him, has a collection of beautiful roses out front, some of them so old their gnarled trunks look like olive trees – and they are beautiful – never better than in May. This one bush was covered with these beautiful roses, splashed with color – and – it was swarming with honey bees! I’ve been lusting after another image of with bees and flowers to paint, so I snapped away. Alas, none of those with bees ended up being destined for paint and paper, but this one did. I love how the back is in shadow, but the center glows with sunlight. And somehow, this one needed to be bigger – nearly 30 inches square. Though in real life, this flower is only about three inches across, It has so much life, it needed to be blown way up. I finished it on our Tahoe vacation in July. Joe and I sat one morning tossing about possible names – nothing really stuck. When Brenda came over and saw it, she about fell on the floor, saying it made her heart burst open and that I should call it “Faith.” Though I wouldn’t have come up with that, it just fit for me. Faith is something that I had just been talking about as a theme in my life right now. It took Brenda to put that together. Now I just need her to tell what me she meant by the connection she sees to the Book of Ruth in the Bible. I’m curious about that.
