Awakening
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This painting filled a craving. Once I got the previous painting finished so clients could have a giclee of it, my insides called out to paint with yellows, pinks and oranges. It took just about two weeks from start to finish – pretty quick for me – and it was so much fun! My brush water bucket was the most gorgeous peachy orange color – it looked like it would taste good like some some fruity tropical nectar. This painting reminds me that color is a nutrient – it fills a need that I have – and I know I’m not alone! Yummy is not just for our taste buds and noses! These are Joseph’s Coat roses from my mother-in-law Evelyn’s front garden in her home in Corte Madera. In painting them, I was struck by how the same plant makes these two incredibly different blooms. Not only are the colors of the petals clearly different, but how the stamens in the two flowers are different shapes and sizes. I gain so much intimate knowledge about my painting subjects in the process of painting them. There is so much we can learn if we pay close attention to what is right here in our midst.
April 2011 – 22″x30″ – Watercolor on paper
Faith
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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.
August 20011 – 29″x29″ – Watercolor on paper
Honey Bee and Rugosa Roses
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One bright day summer day, as I headed out to our side yard to dump the compost bucket, the color of these Rugosa Roses grabbed my eye. I ran back out with my camera and hopped up on the rock wall to capture the flowers. Some honey bees had come flying around – my heart jumped with delight. There were some images with two bees, but this one, with the solo bee flying into the cupped flower was the ONE I had to paint. This painting came through nearly in its entirety on a 10-day trip to Kauai. The intense color that had grabbed my eye was hard to reproduce with watercolor – and I’d never worked with quinacridone paints so saturated like this. Even dry, they move around easily, making layering difficult — in every painting I find a new challenge. I painted the bee last – a fun treat. Honey bees are sweet, docile creatures that are the link to our food supply and their populations are dwindling – baffling scientists. This painting expresses my appreciation for them. Next to paint one pollinating a food plant.
November 2008 – 22″x30″ – Watercolor on paper
Moonstone Rose
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One of the masters who inspires my work is Joseph Raffael. In and email update of his work was a painting of pale roses with pink edges called “Roses Reverie” that knocked my socks off – and it kicked off a hunger in me to paint something like it.
Then, I took photos of some Moonstone roses in my back yard. There just wasn’t a composition of a group of them like he had painted that worked. But this single rose did. I just loved the way that one petal curled out to the right.
As it turns out, this painting is not so much about the rose, though. The way the light landed on the leaves and the way they stretch out like a dancer’s arms is the why of this painting. I left the main bud to the end, (with most of my paintings I paint the “centerpiece” last) and it was actually anti-climactic – I’d already done my favorite part!
Now, when I look at this painting I see elegance and self-assurance, I think of the first two lines of one of my favorite poems: “St Francis and the Sow” by Galway Kinnell and the powerful meaning this poem has had for me.
“The bud stands for all things, for all things flower from within of self blessing.”
January 2007 – 30″x22″ – Watercolor on paper
Nancy’s Rose
My Private Collection
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The photo that inspired this painting was taken in the garden at friends Dean and Nancy’s home when they lived in Fairfax. It’s the earliest of my paintings here on my website. Here is where I first attempted to portray what I now call a “fuzzy background” giving my paintings a sense of depth. I began to see how much more interesting it is to paint subjects in context. The fence behind this rose places it in space, giving the painting it’s third dimension.
I also earned not to use black watercolor because of this painting as I did in the bottom right corner. The original painting looks sooty and flat whereever there is black. With the wonder of Photoshop, I’ve warmed it up for the giclee prints!
2000 – 15″x11″ – Watercolor on paper
Paris Roses
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This painting came from a photo I took of these roses that were hanging from a trellis in a rose allee in the Jardin de Plantes on a trip back to Paris, in late May, 1998. This was before I’d really begun painting in earnest. Yet, the photograph stayed with me. I had been wanting to paint it for a long, long time – in 2000, I did a few quick watercolor sketches, which showed me both the potential of this image and how painting these roses quickly was not going to be satisfying. It had frightened me to attempt to paint it – that the finished painting could never express what I felt looking at the image. I started on the yellowish center rose, then left it lying undone for a while. I see now that I had to trust the process. When I came back to it, I just painted one petal at a time. And then it hooked me in – it couldn’t wait to get time to work on it. Finishing this painting was a turning point. My courage and work had raised to a new level. This is the second of my paintings to sell. My friend Victoria Bentley bought it because of the way it moved her just looking at a scan of it I e-mailed to her! She said when she saw it, it took her to a place inside that she didn’t even know existed. Several years later, David and Cindy told me they would love to have had this painting, never thinking they could. I put this out to Vicki as she had since put her life and much of her resources into her cause in Africa Empower Congo Women. It happened to come at a perfect time when she needed to fund a project. Now David and Cindy have Paris Roses, Vicki has a specially-embellished giclee and children’s school fees in Africa have been paid.
December 2005 – 22″x30″ – Watercolor on paper
Radiance
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There must be something about this time of year. Coming out of winter, having just painted something that had more muted colors, just as last year, I crave bright, intense, warm colors. Last year I painted “Awakening,” Joseph’s Coat roses growing in my mother-in-law’s garden in Corte Madera. This year I’ve painted Joseph’s Coat roses growing in my mom’s garden in Woodacre. Nice symmetry. Though they are the same variety of rose, the two paintings have quite a different feel to me. The two roses in “Awakening” are both in full sun, opening to the light. The main rose in this one is lit from behind, with the surrounding roses getting most of the light. Yet, they don’t keep the light from making its way through. There is a quiet receptivity to this image that gives me peace and is a reminder of that part of me that can be a bit more private and still be radiant. And I was drawn to other aspects of this image – the cobalt blue-violet in the upper right and the deep green leaves. Though there are differences, it does make a nice companion to “Awakening.” My two moms and the love of roses I share with them.
March 2012 – 22″x30″ – Watercolor on paper
Reach
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L’Hay les Roses is an absolutely phenomenal and overwhelming rose garden in a suburb south of Paris. I visited it one Saturday in June, several weeks after arriving in France in 1996. It had been gray and cloudy since I’d arrived. This was the first sunny weekend and I was buoyant and eager. The underside of this rose growing skyward caught my eye. I love interesting perspectives. Painting it I kept fretting that it was going to be a too-sweet, grandma painting, ugh. I painted the sky last. I had an awful time getting the even, clear wash I wanted. I was convinced I’d ruined it. Creative impulses were fed by my aghast and frustration. I got a 4″ house painting brush out of the garage, moved outside on the patio table, painted standing up and just slapped on a lot more paint and water, dropping in new colors. The now on-purpose textured sky is deeper and the painting far more interesting than it would have been. This is a life-in-full-color sky!
July 2007 – 30″x22″ – Watercolor on paper
Roses for Annie
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This painting really frightened me. I think it was drawn on the watercolor paper for over a year before I put a brush to it. These roses were growing at the AARS test garden at Garden Valley Ranch in Petaluma. I have no idea what variety they are, or if they even became one. Annie is my sister-in-law. I was inspired by her fiery energy to paint these wildly detailed roses.
October 2004 – 22″x30″ – Watercolor on paper
