Holiday Bouquet Dec 2, 2024

Last week I had a sudden urge to paint a colorful floral still life. When the Muse whispers I listen.

For visual reference I chose a photo from my “local post office counter display” file. Thank you postmaster Kathy and Cynthia for sharing so much inspiration!

I’ve come to understand that painting (at least the way I do it) requires two distinct types of seeing. “Floodlight” mode remains a few steps back. This is the wide angle macro view of the big picture. Alternatively, “spotlight” mode shifts down to a micro view and very narrow range of focus. All attention is intensely directed toward an individual component or specific detail. In his excellent book The Creative Act: A Way of Being, Rick Rubin describes this alternating approach very well. “Zoom in and obsess, zoom out and observe. We get to choose.”

For me in painting, the process looks something like this:
Step 1. Zoom out to see the all-important big picture and compositional motif.
Step 2. Zoom in on an individual “detail”. See (not think) deeply into that specific element, and to the best of my ability, translate that visual impression into paint on canvas.
Step 3. Repeat steps 1-2 several hundred times until the painting is finished.

In painting flowers especially, I find the best way to capture their inherent beauty and representational truth is to forget what they are altogether and just paint what I see.

“You can observe a lot just by watching.” Yogi Berra

Original Sold. Next Day in Vermont Monday, Dec 16.