Flowers Now and Then

Geraniums Summer 2009
Watercolor Gladiola 1999

Watercolor Daffodils 1999

So in celebration of my first sale on www.Etsy.com a look at the progress I've made on painting florals.

The watercolors were part of the process and a good step to letting the paint go where it wants. I had watercolor lessons in the summer of 1970 when I was 13 and just had no idea of transparency and the white of the paper. (I wish I still had those first paintings just to track the progress. ) They were heavy and dark and horrific but typical ( I think) of first attempts.

In the almost 30 years since

I clearly made progress and was happy with these florals in 1999.

But......pushing onward.

The geraniums (recently sold on www.Etsy.com) evolved from all the paint throwing that I have been doing and the conpletely abstract newspaper paintings seen in previous posts.

Apparently I needed to swing wildly to that end to free up the structure of the florals. The geraniums ended where they did because in frustration I used a rag that was handy and blotted the paint into a more impressionistic place. Also some mental shift was required to allow what was trying to be a very rigid representation of geraniums to soften into the suggestion of geraniums. I kept working the painting until I got what you see here but walking away for a while is sometimes another choice.