Reverence

Original Sold

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This is the first photo I’ve been inspired to paint (apart from commissions) that I didn’t take, I didn’t witness the moment the camera captured these shapes, shadows and colors.  It was taken by Paulette, one of the faithful artists in our Thursday group, of a rhododendron in her garden in Mill Valley.  She had uploaded it to her folder of potential paintings on Dropbox.  Whenever she asked me to look through the folder with her in search of her next painting, I kept asking about this one.  “Why don’t you paint this one?”  I asked.  I just loved the soft light and the wonderful shapes and colors in the out-of-focus background.  Over and again, she said she couldn’t see herself painting it.  In response to another “nah” from her, I said – mostly teasing – “well, then, I’ll just have to paint it.”  She took me seriously and bequeathed the image to me.

This is the second in a recent series of small paintings. I’m painting them using a printed image to refer to (no electronic devices) and a tiny palette of just some my favorite paints. They are “unplugged” paintings – something to work on when taking a short break from my bigger work, or when it’s not practical to use my big palette and computer.  I’m enjoying working at a more leisurely pace as well as having little attachment to how it “turns out.”

The name came via one of my weekly posts.  Feeling like we are swimming in a sea of irreverence and disrespect, I found myself writing a post about reverence.  Looking at the in-progress art and the reference image and it just worked.  I wasn’t intending on offering these unplugged paintings for sale.  But then Lissa, my business coach and a devotee and collector of my art saw it in progress and it did that mysterious-something that art does to those it’s meant for.  When she read that I was considering calling it “Reverence,” that clinched it.  And it is now in eastern Canada.

January 2017 – 15″x15″ – Watercolor on paper