"Flower Collection"

(sold)

"Flowers are the best collections." Whether they're in a vase, dried under glass, in a painting, or in a field...flowers remain one of the most popular images for all types of art and celebrations. This painting was inspired by a hibiscus plant by our front door.

This is an abstracted image and not meant to be totally representational. To arrive at the salmon colored flower, I really needed a bright red instead of Alizarin Crimson. A true red (like Napthol or Cad. Red) plus a bit of orange will achieve that salmon color, but alas, I was determined to paint this flower on this Monday morning!

The leaves are also very stylized, but that really makes it look even more contemporary. If I had it to do all over again, I would probably abstract it even more and simply create a design that projects the frilly and delicate nature of this particular flower. And this is the best part of abstraction. Any of the design elements in the realistic image can be altered and rearranged to create something totally abstract. In this case, I would keep the colors the same and the "frilly" edge in tact, but everything else would be up for grabs.

In fact, it would be nice to have a collection of images based on the same inspiration image and simply abstracted in different ways. Of course, my mind is absolutely on collections right now due to the fact that there is an upcoming exhibit called "Poetic Collections".  So there will likely be quite a few postings of quotes from or giving a nod to poetry.

The technique in this image was based on glazing techniques except for the first layer which was wet into wet. So maybe you can pick a flower from your collection in the yard and give this a shot. And there you have it...just a few more things to think about.