Back to plein air painting. I have a friend who lives quite close by and has a most delightful garden. I painted there three times this summer and each time it was a different kind of treat. In May, the peonies, roses and irises were showing all their bounty. So lush and joyful.
Tulip Time was painted back in April when the tulips were fresh and delightful. Each season brings its own charm. I painted this one plein air out on the deck but simplified the background.
I decided to do a flatlay to show this painting off in a different way for my new website. By-the-way, that is up and running now! Same web address (www.hilaryfarmer.com) will take you to my newly hosted and fresh looking website. Hope you check it out!
This abstract exploration ended up with some artifacts from fairly early in the layering process that didn’t want to be covered up – flowers, a hummingbird and maybe the moon. This is definitely a case where the original is hard to capture in a photograph. When I paint this way, the textures and layers are quite challenging for me to show on line.
In my mind this one is reaching for “Monet meets Chagall”. 🙂
Tom wrote a really lovely poem that speaks to this painting beautifully.
coalescing currents curl from out of deeper darkness flowing down to pools that swirl with stillness beneath starless skies where hope abides and wing’d shapes may one day fly through the chaos life will strive to reach afar across this world where coalescing currents curl
Pansies and Weavings (8″ x 10″ oil on raised panel)
I painted this one for my Mother. She’s an avid gardener and loves pansies. She also weaves, so I combined those two loves here. If you look closely, you can see subtle hearts in the background.
Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! (She got the painting in the mail a couple of days ago, so it’s OK to post!)
Tom wrote a beautiful haiku tying this painting to the larger world.
every year in spring nature weaves her colours deep soft fabric petals
Playing with twisting branch shapes and spring blooms, this was done from my imagination. It is a very freeing way to work! …And a bee because then you can smell the apple blossoms and hear the hummmm of activity when looking at the painting.
Here is Tom’s delightful haiku for this piece.
crooked branches trace stark shapes across winter sky where bees buzz in spring
Wind. Flower. (24″ x 36″ acrylic on canvas)Wind. Flower. (Detail lower left corner)Wind. Flower. (Detail upper left corner)Wind. Flower. (Detail upper right)
I have been working on this painting (off and on) for months. I did post it once before but then after some time went by I decided to add even more layers. The overall photo doesn’t really show it well so I added some detail shots. I really do enjoy this process of building up and scraping away to reveal what’s underneath in places. It started out as a meditation on a friend’s garden I had visited and that is still there, but it dissolved and resolved into something else.
Tom wrote a deeply beautiful poem for this one.
Earth, water, air, and fire combine, combust, conflate, conspire to form the mystery of all things: the solid ground, a ghost that sings of other Edens lost to time and futures flying in their prime toward the secret, never seen. They flit and flutter, twist and lean to glimpse beyond this life’s abyss and catch a moment’s endless bliss.
This one started as a few abstract squiggles and evolved into a memory of a tree from the farm I grew up on. An old gnarled tree, it was really tall for a crabapple. It was gloriously covered in blossoms in the spring and small hard fruit in the fall that my mother made mysteriously delicious jelly from.
Tom’s poem is just perfect for it.
Four-score and ten: my season’s span from summer warmth to winter snows from spring’s first bud to autumn’s fan of drying leaves. My circle’s closed
by blossoms blousing in the breeze which grow to apples in the heat turned hard and tart by fall’s first sneeze then frost like diamonds dusts my feet.
Four-score and ten: my season’s span ’til hence I go where I began.
OK, this is the third and last bumblebee of this series …but who could blame me? They are so cute and this one even has a heart on its back. I scaled down my brushes a bit to do these but you can clearly see the brush strokes because the painting is so small.
Here is Tom’s poem for this one. I think this bumblebee deserves his nap. 🙂
Not every bee’s a working worker: some like me are known to chill upon a leaf. But I’m no shirker! I just rest when all is still.
I had so much fun painting the last bumblebee that I did another. It’s a challenge to get the fuzziness just so and the transparency of the wings too. Don’t forget how tiny the paintings in this series are – just 4″ x 4″.
Tom’s poem reflects the bustling busy-ness of the bees!
Scurry, shuffle, search and sniff, gather pollen all the day. Circle, flying, catch a whiff of new flowers… On my way!
A small bouquet of pansies from the garden – subtle shades of velvet. I love how this one came out. It almost makes you want to put your nose to the painting!
Tom wrote a haiku that perfectly evokes the day.
butterflies gather fluttering in shadowed light lazy summer days