What Can You Learn From A Vase and a Flower?
It’s been just about a decade since I plunged full force into a project of creating small still-life works. It became my “fifty flowers” project. It was a way to work through a lot of things at once: artistic direction as well as personal issues. With the help of a good friend, who graciously received and critiqued e-mailed images of each piece, I worked on drawing, painting and collaging the same image of a small vase of flowers over and over. Fifty times.
So much good came from this project.
This week I did some shelf cleaning in my studio, and I found what remains of the stack of fifty flowers. I kept just a few.
Serendipitously, also this week, I saw a great photo of a vase of sunflowers. It reminded me of the joyful part of creating still life florals. So, I decided to go back in time to the still-life subject matter, but address it in the bigger size and with the methods I am using in my current body of abstract landscapes work.
I am right-handed. Sketching the flowers with my non-dominant hand is a way to keep the lines fresh. I love the experience of drawing left-handed.
I created pieces of transparent fabric in vibrant yellows and oranges to collage into the flowers. Printed loosely, wet-into-wet. I did not cut the fabrics to fit my sketch tightly. I wanted a freer construction for this work.
After I collaged al the layers and did some wet acrylic washes, I drew in the flower details. This detail shows the line character of the left-handed drawing.
I’ve titled this one “A Sun-Promise Realized.” When you plant a sunflower seed and watch its astonishing process of growth, it’s almost overwhelming. It happens fast. And sunflowers are BIG, bold, exuberant, colorful and a beacon for bees of all kinds. All that contained in a single seed!
A lesson. Growth happens. Change can happen. It’s all there inside.
To my artmaking friends: sometimes we need to plunge in a new direction.
To my art-appreciating friends: The original work of an artist is a record of hours in the studio, experiments, and personal journey.
If you’d like more information on “A Sun-Promise Realized”
it’s on my website, HERE.
Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi
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