Happy daisy day …oil painting

Happy daisy day (6″ x 6″)

Not sure why but today was a daisy day! They just make you smile, don’t they? Well me anyway! The paint was dancing on my brush …and so the daisies were dancing too.

And the daisies are dancing in Tom’s joyful poem!

Daisies dancing in the spring
conjuring the summertime
around the fields they leap and fling
themselves against the walls of rhyme
until their song of summer breaks
into a wild ecstatic shake
of petals drawing magic near
from out the sky so blue and clear
into long twilight where there dwells
more beauty than the world can hold
still the dance so long and bold
carries on until the knell
of day at last brings summer sleep
and rest before tomorrow’s leaps.

image (c) 2018 Hilary Farmer
poem (c) 2018 TJ Radcliffe

 

 

happy daisy mandala…

happy daisy!

Water colour has transformed the black and white mandala. There are so many ways this could be done that sometimes it is hard to choose but this time, the colour palette and rendering of the single large flower behind the drawing was in my mind from the beginning …a carefree feeling of summer meadows.

happy daisy – detail

In colour, it is much easier to see the dainty hoverflies. While mimicking the appearance of bees for self-protection, they are stingless. To give an idea of scale, the overall mandala is 8″ in diameter so the yellow centre with all the intricate details is less than 3″ across and the hoverfly is about 1/4″ long which is about full scale – although they do vary in size by species.

Here is Tom’s new sonnet for the colour version. Wonderful!

find the flower soft within the flower
rising moon behind the open fields
where the nightingale sings o’re the bower
of his lover, dreaming as she yields
to seductive songs of other climes:
promises of joy complete, fulfilled
by the long result of flowing time
down the river, through the hollow hills
where ancient magics deep within the Earth
stir, arise from endless eon’s sleep,
go whispering along the banks in mirth
a spell is spoke, a promise made to keep
Beneath the moon two lovers eyes alight
Upon each other, daisies in the night

image (c) 2017 Hilary Farmer
poem (c) 2017 TJ Radcliffe

daisy love mandala…

daisy love!

Back to full on summer (well the last gasp of summer anyway) with daisies! They are such a happy flower to my mind. I started this one with a Celtic love knot in the centre and worked my way from more abstract in the middle to more naturalistic at the edges. I love to add some fauna to these mandalas but was wondering what different insect to choose this time. Can you find them? There are two tiny hover flies – or flower flies – lurking in the petals. Cute little pollinators! They will show up more clearly once the mandala has been painted. There’s one in the detail below.

daisy love mandala – detail

Tom has written a wonderful new sonnet for this one. 🙂 He often sees quite different things than I do in these mandalas so it is exciting to see his poem that accompanies, seeming just right, without mirroring exactly.

Radiating energy abounds
from out the core so dense and dark and deep
sinusoidal synergies surround
oscillations making quantum leaps
from stem to stamen, fecund in the sun
anthers fat with lakhs of silent seed
hieroglyphic human hearts are one
while triple-stems lift blossoms high to feed
the insects buzzing lazy through the air
searching out sweet nectar to devour
spreading pollen here and also there
casually ensuring all the flowers
will not be lost too soon in time’s great well
but in the fields the daisies still will dwell.

image (c) 2017 Hilary Farmer
poem (c) 2017 TJ Radcliffe