Preserved

Preserve:
- to keep alive or in existence;
- make lasting, to protect or spare

- to keep possession of; retain

- to prepare so as to resist decomposition

Plants come to the end of their cycle and decay back to the earth only to resurrect themselves the following spring. Some people are interested in
preserving the beauty of flowers and saving them from their eventual demise.

Pressing is one of the simplest methods of preserving flowers, but the relief is lost and the flower is reduced to flatness. It is questionable if the essence of the flower is maintained. Perfection is difficult to attain and maintain. A walk around any garden is a reminder of this.

The Flower Observed

I own quite a collection of art books focusing on floral imagery in art. I'm currently re-reading Art in Bloom by Ella M. Foshay which contains paintings from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This spring I will get to spend several days in Boston with a friend and fellow artist who lives in the area. I just may get to see some of these paintings in the flesh.

In an eloquent essay by Foshay titled The Flower Observed she traces the path of floral imagery in art through the centuries from its practical beginnings, through religious significance, to the works of 20th century artists. It is quite a gallop through history and very informative for someone who is interested in this subject matter.

She begins by noting that poets, artists, philosophers, gardeners etc. who respond to floral forms and consider the life cycle of plants as a metaphor for the human condition all share a common belief that "essential truths could be found through the consideration of the floral kingdom".

Did you know that...

• along with the study of human anatomy, the pages of da Vinci's notebooks were filled with notations and drawings reflecting his preoccupation with the plant world and organic life?
  

Just before 1600 Dutch and Flemish painters produced the first large scale floral paintings (before that flowers were used as symbolism in religious paintings).


Still Life with Flowers(1639) oil on panel,
Hans Bollingier










Vanitas paintings present the exquisite beauty of a flower in full bloom as a symbol of impending decay.

Vanitas Still Life with a Boquet and a Skull (1643) Adriaen van Utrecht









The development of the magnifying glass intensified artists' visual understanding of floral forms and promoted an increased naturalism of floral detail.

The rose is considered the queen of flowers.

Jean-Pierre Redoute imortalized the rose in his prints, entitled Les Roses issued in three volumes from 1817 to 1824?

Rosa Muscosa Multiplex, Jean- Pierre Redoute










John Ruskin, philosopher and artist, recommended that artists avoid the hybrids or the "florist's flowers" and paint the truth of nature, i.e., wildflowers


Study of Foliage ( 1845) John Ruskin




The invention of the x-ray played a role comparable to the magnifying glass and microscope in intensifying artists ' perspective on natural form?
Flower Forms, 1928, Sheeler... "all nature has an underlying abstract structure and it is within the province of the artist to search for it."



Edward Hopper painted only one floral image in his whole career represented in Room in Brooklyn painted in 1932?

Ruskin's Rose

Venice casts a spell on most of its visitors, me included. After spending a week there four years ago I sought to recapture my feelings by reading many books related to Venice . That's how I came across Ruskin's Rose. Not only was this book about Venice, it was also about esteemed art historian John Ruskin, author of and Modern Painters and The Stones of Venice.

To say that Ruskin's life was colourful is an understatement. He had a string of misfortunes including his scandalously annulled marriage, his loss of faith , a greatly diminished fortune and the death of his much loved Rose La Touche. He continues to be a figure of great interest to writers who conjecture about the state of his mental health and sexual preferences. If this little introduction piques your curiosity and you research further, you'll reach your own conclusions.

Rose La Touche
John Ruskin, 1861

After Rose's death Ruskin went to Venice to heal. Ruskin's Rose uses materials from their letters and Ruskin's autobiography and other writings. It is beautifully illustrated with letters, maps, flowers, lockets and other artifacts. I'm a romantic at heart and quite liked this little book for its sentimentality in words and illustrations.

Although Ruskin fled to Venice to escape his pain, the city cast its usual spell on him and his time there actually intensified his emotions. He moved through the days without focus until he stumbled across the painting of Vittore Carpaccio, a 15th century artist and found his Rose again in the fairy-tale portraits.

And now for some of the less romantic facts which I discovered after reading the book. I admit the information deflated the fairy tale I had created while reading the book.

Ruskin fell in love with a deeply religious and high - spirited Rose when she was eleven and proposed marriage when she was 17 and he was 40. He met her while working at a girls' school. Rose's parents refused his request because of his coloured past and his atheism and Rose herself refused marriage when she came of age because of religious differences. Unfortunately Rose died in 1875 in a Dublin nursing home. Her death is credited with causing the onset of bouts of mental illness in Ruskin from 1877. He convinced himself that the Renaissance painter Vittore Carpaccio had included portraits of Rose in his paintings of the life of St. Ursula. Ruskin also took to Spiritualism trying to contact Rose's spirit.

All this information is needed to get to this artwork....

Ruskin's Rose (2009) mixed media on canvas (16 x 16)

Venice still flows through my veins after four years. I've compared every European city I visited since to it and none have matched the pull of Venice. The old section of Venice is small with all these little rabbit warren streets that go hither and yon. Every day was a new adventure where little things caused me to celebrate being there and being alive- textures on a wall, colouful window baskets, glimpses of ornate fabrics and house details, snatches of songs, the lyrical cadence of spoken Italian, children in a square, birds chirping, the water taxis moving their cargo, glimpses of water from the many bridges etc. I noticed the small things in Venice and every new day brought anticipation. I was never disappointed.

Venice is in my blood. Ruskin's Rose (my painting) celebrates my feelings about Venice and how the memories still flow through in the same way the canals flow through the city. You can't spend time in Venice without being attracted to the ways gold is used especially in churches and in fabrics. Venice is where Ruskin found his Rose again. I think Venice itself was also Ruskin's rose. I chose a red rose to symbolize Venice because of the history of red roses. Red roses mean "I love you", they also represent courage, respect and unconscious beauty.

The Midas Touch

The Midas Touch, 8 x 10 in. encaustic mixed media

It's never just a flower for me. There is always some underlying reason why I choose to highlight one flower over another in my work. Tulips have an interesting history that we can learn from.

Tulips are native to the western Mediterranean and the steppes of Central Asia. The empire of the Ottoman Turks once included much of the land that was the natural habitat of the tulip. It was through Turkey that most of the tulips reached Western Europe.

The shape of the tulip reminded those first Europeans who acquired them of Turkish headwear, and they dubbed the flower "tulipan", from "tuilbend", a Turkish word for "turban". The Italian word tulipano came from the Turkish word tulibend. From "tulipan" came the French word "tulipe" and the English word tulip.

The Turks cultivated the tulip widely and in 1562 the first large shipment of tulips reached Antwerp, then part of the Dutch nation. It is hard to believe that there was a time in the 1630's when the desire for highly prized tulips created through horticultural experimentation led to "tulipomania" . At that time tulips were available only to the rich who coveted them for their beauty, rarity and status. Once middle class merchants and farmers began to realize how much money was involved in the tulip trade they sensed economic opportunity. Everyone wanted in. The bottom fell out of the market during 1637 when bulb merchants couldn't get the usual inflated prices for their bulbs. Word spread like wildfire and the market crashed. Vanity and greed led to the economic downfall of many men at that time. Sound familiar?

This work reflects the tulip as a prized object, cultivated and desired through history. Today interest in new varieties of tulips remains high. The yellow parrot tulips represented on the right side of the work are very popular. The left side of the work alludes to some of the history of the tulip.

Why floral art ?

I am attracted to floral imagery because flowers, like people, change with passing time. The passage of time and its effects on nature, objects, memory and identity is a consistent theme in my work . Flowers offer a different perspective on the passage of time , one that carries the hope of renewal within the rhythmic pattern of growth and decay.

Flowers are a perfect metaphor for our lives. Artist Simon Bull has a similar take . "Flowers speak to us about our own human experience; they grow and go through different phases of life just as we do," Bull says. "They tell us stories that can be connected to ourselves."

One of my first artist statements noted that "flowers are insignificant in size and blend into nature's overall design. Their worth is often assessed by fleeting glance and a momentary recognition of beauty." Some artists like Georgia O'Keeffe deal with the insignificance of flowers by greatly enlarging their scale to put them in your face as it were. I have a much more subtle approach , keeping my work small and intimate and inviting the viewer to come closer to see the complex world I create by using colour, texture and subtle layering. Flowers have their own language, one of subtle nuances and subtexts, that goes beyond external appearances. Meaning is found in colour, shape, location, stages of growth and historical connections. I invite viewers to look beyond the obvious to determine what flowers tell us about life. Ryall 2004

The genre of floral art has a long history with origins reaching back to the art of ancient Egypt where flowers were painted on vessels and clothing. Many paintings from the middle ages and onward in Europe use flowers to symbolize various aspects of religion, and in Dutch still life works flowers were often reminders that the delights of the world are transitory. During that time when Dutch vanitas paintings were popular, varieties of flowers were available because of exploration in the far east and the new world. There seemed to be an endless supply of subject matter with the exotic being highly sought and represented through art.

The use of flowers during Victorian times to send messages connected to emotions or personal characteristics has always intrigued me. Rather than directly impart the sentiment to another person, it was all said with flowers. Such a safe, discreet way to behave! Sometimes a whole bouquet needed to be interpreted together to understand the message from the sender. Certainly, this was a very different kind of text. If you received a bouquet of daffodils, pansies and periwinkle the sender would be commenting on your thoughtfulness as a friend and expressing the highest regard for you. Similarly, Chinese flower paintings represent specific emotions and are given as gifts to convey a range of sentiments. The orchid represents a refined, noble or beautiful person, and the peony symbolizes wealth or good fortune.

I often use this "language of flowers" to impart messages to my viewers. I am sending the messages in a language that is now defunct to most people. I don't see this as a useless activity. It is a statement on my part that communication is often a one way affair with the other party being unwilling or unable to receive what is communicated. This theme of communication and how different "texts" can or cannot be read reflects my experiences with students who struggled to make sense of the written word. For them written language was a one way street. My latest body of work "Reading a garden" treats a garden as a text and explore how we make meaning from gardens based on our background knowledge. This work goes a step further and also explores how what we come to understand from our experiences fades quickly with the passage of time.

Painting for the market

Everyone has an opinion about what kind of art sells best in the marketplace. My dealer tells me red sells. Most people say flowers don't sell, but I know differently. Such statements make me feel contrary. I can honestly say I have never created a painting specifically to sell it. I don't think about art in terms of sales. First and foremost, my work has to be important to me. My friend says such statements come from artists who can still eat and pay the bills if they don't sell work. She is probably right about this. For me, it is about creating work and having someone care enough about what I have created to take it home. I think it is impossible to determine what will sell, and if you go down that road you are lost forever because your work ceases to be something that comes from the deepest part of you. It makes art a product defined by the marketplace.

It seems that the kind of work I like to create is often in a category that is supposedly more difficult to sell. Take my penchant for floral imagery. I've had a love hate relationship with flowers as content in my work. How can something so beautiful and delicate be the stuff that serious art explores? Now everyone knows that such subject matter isn't important, not!

The changing face of red flowers in my work

Breathe 2004

Connections 2007

No red lately.... but still lots of flowers

My next post will explore the use of floral imagery in art.

In praise of poppies

It's not only the vivid colours and the tissue paper petals bobbing precariously on curved stems that explain my love affair with poppies. Poppies are interesting no matter what aspect of development they are in.
Ready to burst forth at any moment, you can almost convince yourself you see bits of red escaping its temporary prison.

This vivid orb is hard to ignore. I love this photo and eventually it prompted a painting.

Striving(2004) 10 x 30 in. mixed media

The blooming period of poppies is very short, lasting only two to four days before the petals begin to drop. Because of this brief bloom time, poppies are rarely used for cut flower bouquets.
What's left behind after the petals drop is just as beautiful as the flower in bloom.

While the poppy is in bloom the pod is only a small berry but it grows quickly and reaches 5 to 7.5 centimeters. Pods come in two shapes: round and slightly elongated. The seeds inside the dried pods found in fall gardens will become next years poppies. Initially pods are grayish green and somewhat shiny, but they change to a dull gray, a signal they can be picked and still maintain a hard shell. If you pick them too early the pods will shrivel up. Dried pods last indefinitely. I tie the pods together with a string and hang them upside down so the stems will dry straight. Be ready with something to collect the release of seeds. This was a big surprise the first time it happened.

Fertility series (2003)

Enclosed, 5 x 5 in. acrylic and modeling paste

Removed, 5 x 5in. acrylic and modeling paste

Spilling, 5 x 5in. acrylic and modeling paste

Revealed, 5 x 5in. acrylic and modeling paste

Tenacity

Messages 3, 5 x 5, mixed media collage

Poppies of every variety inspire me. They are repeated content in my work. I love the vibrant colours, paper thin petals and curving stems. They move and lean into the wind in precarious positions. One wonders how they stay upright. I think they are one of the best examples of tenacity in the floral kingdom.

New work - Postcard series

In my Postcard Series I think I have found a format that will serve me well for many years. I like to have something to revert to when I am working on a larger series which I classify, rightly or wrongly as" more serious." I always grade what I create on a continuum that ranges from serious and worthy to fun and frivolous. At the back of my mind every time I create something , I question its worth in the larger scheme of art that is created around me. I often wonder if other artists see their work in this way. Perhaps it comes from my teaching background where everything is constantly assessed. I know that there are times this constant rating is affecting how I see myself as an artist.

These images will be part of my Reading a Garden series too. I'm attracted to the idea of sending postcards from places you visit as a way for loved ones to participate in the experience. What they receive is the result of several selection processes. The original place photographed was created through a series of decisions by one or possibly many people, the photographer who created the postcard selects views from many available, from these some are chosen for reproduction. The sender of the photograph selects from those available in one store or gift shop and further refines the visual information by adding comments. Each step along the way is a form of "reading" a place. I think the postcards fit in very well with the Reading a Garden theme.

In an early post I wrote about one of the magnolia trees found in Birr Castle Demense and I'm still thinking about it. The combination of realism and abstracted backgrounds is a challenge but I think I pulled it off.

Another meadow painting

This is another meadow painting created using the same process described in the last post. This was my first work in the Garden Series and it is actually my favourite of the ten completed works to date. I particularly like the way the imagery moves from highly realistic to very abstract. There are all kinds of surprises within it when you take a closer look. I really wanted to take a common scene that many people just pass by without a second look, and create something that reveals the energy and life tucked away in the tall grass evident to those who take a closer look. Both this painting and the one from the previous post are the same meadow.







While the sky is overcast, there is a defiant energy and brightness in the flowers and grasses that is always there even in the rain. Do you have a favourite between the two? I'd love to hear from you.

Life continues

Italy is one of my favourite countries. It has been on my mind in the last several days because of the earthquake in L'Aquila. Watching clips of the community burial service in the town square was heart wrenching; I have no way of imagining how the families and community members must have felt even though many news services attempted to put a personal face on the catastrophe. The devastation was immense, and now families have to go about rebuilding their lives without loved ones. History has taught us that life continues in the aftermath of extreme hardship. It will grow and bloom in new ways.

These photos were taken on a recent trip to Italy. I was attracted to the signs of life and the need for beauty that existed in unlikely places. To me they were reminders that we are alive and will survive under very adverse conditions.

At ground level

or high up, most windows have some evidence of life sitting on their ledges. Sometimes scraggly and sometimes lush, they bloom.


Outside a very nice restaurant in Venice stood an old, boarded up building. I could not figure out who had planted geraniums there or why thy were in this location.

Beauty and purposeful destruction together. I know there is a graffiti art movement, I understand the ideas behind it, but I cannot like it no matter how hard I try to give it space in my mind.

Novice needs help

In Between (2008) Mixed media on cradled panel, 10 x 30

Today I'm experimenting with the file size of the images I upload to my posts. I am such a novice when it comes to anything having to do with digital output. While I can manipulate file sizes, I really don't have a firm understanding of the effects of these changes apart from the obvious that you lose detail. Is there an optimal size to use in your posts? What other factors should I be aware of? I'm hoping for comments from my readers to add to my expertise in this area. The top image is at 252 KB while the second one is 1.0 MB.

I have an additional problem with photographing my work. There is usually an element of subtle texture in it as is present in the right side of this work. Often these areas are quite dark which adds to the difficulty of capturing these subtle areas. Any tips to help with this problem would also be welcome.

Progression

Over the years I've painted poppies many times and in many different formats. Alas! I did not see any poppies while I stayed in the gardens at Birr Castle; it was the wrong time of year so there won't be any in this new body of work.

I've taken time away from painting in the last two weeks to review many of my photographs and paintings. I'm looking for something, but I don't know what. I'm hoping this process will help me come to terms with whatever it is I'm supposed to discover about my work. Following is a sequence of work from 2007 back to when I first started painting seriously. If anyone has any words of wisdom in what they see, I'd appreciate hearing them.

Progression #2 (2007) 10 x 34 , paper, photo transfer, acrylic paint, mediums on canvas

Poppies are one of my favourite flowers. I love their tallness, fragility of petals and boldness of colour. I love them at every stage, before bursting into bloom and spent. The seed pods have sculptural qualities that always make me want to paint them in a very stark style. The seeds themselves are prolific which account for the tenacity and spreading quality of poppies. Wild poppies, fragile and supple, create such delicate dots in the vastness of country fields.

Connections (2006) 16 x 16in. photo transfer, paper, acrylic paint, acrylic mediums on canvas

Connections is my favourite painting of this subject matter. Unfortunately it graces someone else's wall now, not mine. There are times I'm sorry I've put a work for sale. This is one of my biggest regrets.

Emerging (2005) 18 x 24, paper, acrylic paint and mediums on canvas

Big, bold and beautiful. What's left to say?

Cycle (2004) 12 x 12 in. acrylic on canvas

This was one of my first paintings executed long before my current interest in creating complex surfaces using many layers and different materials. Some of the same ideas are expressed in Connections, but in a totally different way. What a difference two years can make.

Displaced (2003) 7 X 12 in., acrylic paint and gel on canvas

I always feel a little sad to see a flower removed from its natural environment, but I selfishly continue to let my desire for their beauty overcome this reluctance. This following text is written vertically on the right.

Plucked from nurturing soil and forced to rethink the notion of home.