Spring Snow

Spring Snow   oil/canvas   14 x 11

The quality of the sun is quite different come February.  The sun is higher in the sky, moods become lighter and the color palette of our surroundings changes and subtly shifts from blues and violets to yellows and greens.  

These late-in-the-winter snowfalls are still so captivating but the snow often doesn't last the day and everything just looks meltier....is that a word?

This winter landscape records those subtle changes, I think.

I am pleased.

Coneflower Past - and past their prime

Coneflower Past   watercolor   9 x 6

Who decides at what stage flowers are beautiful?  Cars?  Furniture?  Clothing?....and people?  At some point, we must stretch our minds to widen this narrow, culturally-influenced circle of beauty.  

Coneflowers in their prime are the perfect subject for floral painting....vibrant color and stiff strong stalks.  In my own garden, coneflowers are dead-headed regularly into October.  And the pruner must decide which heads still retain beauty.  Past-the-prime flower heads offer their own sense of beauty when the leaves curl and provide interesting counter-spaces between the leaves, giving us a sense of rhythm.  The seeds are not full, demonstrating the picking-off by weather and insects.  These, too, are beautiful to me.  Color is faded the leaves start to into themselves.  All are beautiful.

This small painting is pleasing to me and allows me to meditate on the importance of all things past their prime.