Monday, July 10, 2017

Flowers from My Cutting Garden

From the rich soil of a New Brunswick vacation I grew a lush garden crowded with blossoms. I've always liked the idea of a cutting garden, so I snipped flowers with wild abandon, plunking them into all manner of containers and setting them on tables, bringing their lively color and magnificence into my home.

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I've painted an abstract floral series—woo hoo!

I had no plan to do so when I began. You may recall that my starting point was to "make messy" and see where that took me. It took me first to a vase of flowers, and then I got the idea to create a series with the other three quadrants of my original "mess."

Sticking to my self-imposed commitment to a series was a challenge. Pushing myself to have a desired outcome, even though the particulars were up for grabs, proved to be difficult.

I felt a considerable amount of internal uproar as I worked on this series. I sense an overall unrest or turning point of some sort in my painting.

But, rather than let cerebral peregrinations catch me up in a swirl, for now I'm just going to wake up and smell the roses, so to speak.









7 comments:

Sheila said...

Woo Whoo and way to go! I love them all. The orange blooms catch me right away. Which is funny because I used to think I did not like orange. For some reason they seem to burst off the canvas. I love these, with their wonkiness and textures and lively blooms! Go Dotty!

Sheila said...

(Love these all, I meant)

dotty seiter: now playing said...

Thanks, Sheila. Wonkiness, texture, and liveliness are all places I wanted to go with this series. And what fun that the orange blooms catch you right away and burst off the page—that particular painting came the closest to being pitched (and I do mean outright pitched, vs. painting over), which I almost NEVER do, but I dove back in and the rescue was one of my most fulfilling missions of recent weeks.

Lola (Jen Jovan) said...

Magnificent! What a glorious series! What sizes are these? I can imagine them hanging all together in a glorious floral arrangement. :) These are both lovely AND very marketable, I think. You are a genius!

dotty seiter: now playing said...

Jen, thanks for you input. These are 4.5x6". I had one with me when I recently went to a local framing shop to get help with my powder post beetle infestation, and the framer said he thought it'd look great matted and framed as large as 11x14". Like you, I can imagine them together in a glorious floral arrangement. Re marketability, what might you recommend as a step to take???

carol edan said...

What a happy group. Each different yet all connected from the same cloth. Hanging together on the wall a reminder of summer days!

dotty seiter: now playing said...

Carol, thank you for the great descriptors! Music to my ears!

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