Nova

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This is a “Broadway” rose.  It’s a show stopper – with gorgeous color, big fat buds and a heady fragrance.  What’s not to love?

I’ve been coddling a set of images I took of a trio of these roses, full and open, taken in the early evening light.  They were incandescent in that light, but the composition with the vase I had them in wasn’t revealing itself readily.

When in doubt, crop!  Once all the extra stuff was out of the way, the composition landed.  Cool, shadowy light on the left, the always-alluring bright sunshine on the right. 

In a color workshop I was leading on Zoom in the autumn of 2020, a student, Wendy Buckley asked me if I had to reduce the paints/pigments to the absolute minimum, which would they be?  This was easy.  I’ve painted with just three pigments in a few of my paintings.   Then she asked what if I could add in, which would come next.  Nowt this was a fun and interesting question!  It sparked an exploration and eventual realization that I actually could do without my beloved quinacridone rose – as long as I had quinacridone coral and quinacridone magenta.  Mixing those two together I could make a color that was quin rose!  OMG!

For those of you for whom this all means nothing, I apologize for geeking out on color stuff. But this was a major bit of insight!  Imagine finding out you could make strawberries by combining peaches and raspberries.  I was amazed!

I decided I’d put it in practice with my next painting.

This painting was decided upon because it was the perfect opportunity to do without quin rose.  I decided to limit to as few as I could – just four pigments.  Besides the two quins, I used my favorite yellow and my favorite blue – hansa medium and cobalt, respectively.

It took a while to complete, as it accompanied my life from the time just days before my dad died, and his celebration of life, through getting the 2021 calendar finished, produced, on the website and then shipped out, and then… Christmas. There was plenty clamoring for my time away from my brushes.  A few days after New Years, life quieted down and I found the gusto to dig in and get it done by mid-month.

I painted it in a spiral – starting from the blue-purples in the upper left corner, counter-clockwise around and around to the center.  The swirling of the petals had me think about whirling of celestial bodies in outer space.  On a Zoom painting session with my dear friends Sue and Lenore, Lenore suggested it was like a supernova.  Yes!

Supernova… nova… new (year)…  “Nova.”   

22”x22” – Winter 2020/2021 – Watercolor on paper.