ALWAYS ROSES is a 24 x 36 inch oil on canvas still life painting
Here are a couple of images of details as well.
and the second one…
I will be finishing the edges on this painting in a few days and then it will be available for purchase. I will update this post when the painting is posted. This is a sneak preview for those who follow and love my work. If you are interested in buying this painting and you do not want to wait that long, please feel free to contact me directly.
I haven’t painted flowers in the past few years but I have done so on other occasions. It seems I paint whatever I am involved in during my daily living. For example, this week I painted a scene from the local haying I had been asked to photograph for a client (that painting will be share soon as well). When I was in university I painted conceptual paintings about the ideas I was studying and puzzling over. I never painted seascapes at unless I was on the coast. I am sure if I spent more time in the city you be seeing scenes of people in coffee shops or street paintings maybe something like those of Edward Hopper http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/hopper/street and his painting Night Hawks. I do believe that like writing, painting what we know or what is rapped tightly around our present view of the world is most powerful. On this day it was these flowers in their vase 🙂
Here is an image of the painting in context.
The bouquets of flowers were purchased as the finishing touch for our participation in the local home and garden show. This seems on the surface to be fairly straight forward decision. They are beautiful so why not paint them? But this is not a reason for painting – as many things are beautiful and I have no interest in painting them.
I now know that I wanted to paint them because these bouquets of flowers signify a transition point or milestone in my life as part of our Mayne Island community. For a bit of background, our home was built by a brilliant woman who accomplished the task by doing workshops. Many people in our community participated in the completion of our home. Though a newly completed home it was already well-loved before we ever entered the picture. So in many ways we have been hosted by our home in our community for the past five years.
When I went to pick up these flowers the Farm Gate Store they were not yet ready. So I went with the owner, Shanti McDougall, to their farm with my box of vases. I then went along with her while she picked these flowers. She arranged them on her big kitchen table. We chatted the whole time and these flowers carry the warmth, passion and love of being on this planet together with such beauty and abundance of that moment. I left with these huge vases of flowers thinking about how much I have become part of the community where I have lived over the past few years.
Then the next day more than 125 people came through our home and garden. The flowers were part of what anchored me in my inner sense of belonging as I open up our private space – our home – to the public. Our relationship to our home had shifted. We were now equal partners in hosting. We are now part of our community and no longer guests.
My painting of these flowers is a way of marking that transition. This is why the vase of flowers “must” be painted.
There is more about the actual painting process including work in progress images on my Creative Potager post “In the PINKS and other rose painting efforts.”
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If desired, original work can often be purchased directly from Terrill Welch. Please contact Terrill for personalized service.
