Flowers
Flowers
I’ve never particularly liked formal bunches of flowers. Flower arranging can be so beautifully done but there is a kind of unreality to it. It has its function but the thing that I am interested in is the beauty of the flower itself, the delicacy, particularly of wild flowers. Looking at this little group I see something that is opposite, where they are or next to something which makes them stand out.
Two little paintings called “Orla’s flowers”, of some flowers which she picked from the garden, something and nothing, a wild rose, a marigold and a bit of a fern leaf. These represent the feeling of the child picking them and seeing the delicacy of them and that is what I am seeing too.
In a later one called “the fennel seeds” I am moving towards being in with the flowers. I’m not looking at the flowers. I am in there with them, feeling the flowers and their delicacy. I suppose when you think about still life paintings of flowers you think about the detail of the Dutch painters and as much as I can see the skill in them I’m not sure that I want to represent flowers in that way. It’s more to do with the energy of a flower, even to do a painting of the flowers which were dying, because the beauty of them was disappearing and something else was happening to them. That’s something I may take up a bit later.
