Painting Flowers

Texas Wildflowers

I painted this one as a kind of reconstruction.  I based it on a painting I made in 1972 when I was 14.  I painted it when I was in middle school and won the school art award with that picture.  It was a 24" x 30" canvas of Texas wildflowers painted in acrylic in something like a natural setting with rocks.  I have no idea what happened to that painting, but I'm sure it no longer exists.  Alas, there are no photos of it that I could find. 
So, I decided last year to do it again, only this time as I would do it at age 61 instead of 14.  Like that original, I painted it in acrylic paint on a 24" x 30" canvas.  Unlike the first time, I stretched and primed it myself.  Most of the flower varieties in this painting are based on the those that I included in my painting in 1972 as best as I could remember, plus maybe a few extras.   I made this one much more explicitly in a landscape setting and added all kinds of things that were not in the original picture such as insects and fossils.  All of these are things that I loved as a child and still love now.

This is the only one of the flower paintings that I made so far that is professionally photographed.

The Moon and an Io Moth

I made this painting based on a small lot with a kind of planted prairie in McCaren Park in Brooklyn that I passed every time I walked to my studio.  These are all flowers that saw blooming there last autumn.  The insects including the Io moth are memories of things I saw and remembered from when I was very young. 

This is also based on a painting of autumn by the Yuan Dynasty painter Qian Xuan.

This is in acrylic on a 20" x 30" canvas.

Daffodils

This is the most recent of my flower paintings.  I painted it for my students as a demonstration painting on my kitchen table while I am under house arrest along with everyone else for the pandemic.  This is based on the daffodils I saw blooming in McGolrick Park about a block from where I live.
It is relatively small, 14" x 18" on a canvas panel, also in acrylic.

I'm planning a painting of tulips to make on my kitchen table on 2 separate panels, a kind of diptych.