botanical abstract …oil painting

Botanical (6″ x 6″)

I was trying something quite different for me with this piece. I didn’t have a visual reference, scene or photo – rather, I woke up the night before with an image in my head that I wanted to paint. While this painting is related to that image, it isn’t it – so I’ll likely be playing with the idea for a while. And that makes me happy because this was pretty much the most fun I’ve ever had painting. It was a very intuitive process, much more like how I approach drawing the mandalas. It ended up playful and rather extravagant!

Tom’s take on it was different from mine which is to be expected with an abstract. After reading his poem, I see different things in my painting too.

…in chaos bright the universe is born:
incandescent streamers past the dark
before the stars. Space and time are torn
from nothingness and into quavering quarks
existence pours from portals of the night
where the walls of Now are pierced by Then
letting through the angels in their flight
from Heaven as the Where becomes the When.
Blue shifts to red across the broad expanse
long ropes of stars form loops and empty turns.
Stems rise up, each energetic lance
rides across the the field as giants burn.
Galaxies collapse and swiftly spin
as the doors swing open and now in…

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

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White star magnolias …oil painting

White star magnolias (6″ x 6″)

More joy painting magnolias! The grey rainy weather we’ve been having is mitigated by the sight of these beautiful blooms along the streets. As with the previous magnolia painting, as well as expressing the feeling of the flowers, an important part was to imply a background while strongly simplifying the actual background that was there.

Tom’s poem reminds us of just how much we appreciate these flowers at the end of a dark and gloomy winter.

Dashing flowers in the dark
ahead of all the dull police
who would lock away the spark
that from the sky just like a thief
they’ve stolen: all the starry light
that twinkles in the winter night!
They’ve run with it into the spring
which to the poor downtrodden brings
a breath of hope to ease the pain
of dreary lives all painted grey
showing them a better way
to stand against the boring grain.
Each petal wild and yet just so:
in dark or day they brightly glow.

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

pink star magnolias …oil painting

Pink star magnolia (9″ x 12″)

The residential streets here in Vancouver are all abloom with cherry blossoms and magnolias. To my eye the magnolias are almost strangely exotic in their extravagance …beautiful and ephemeral.

Tom’s poem almost magically catches that quality and that moment.

From tropic climes to temperate tropes
blooming bright, first off the mark,
before their leaves have burst with hopes
of summer sun and sultry dark
deep starry nights of beauty wild:
magnolias cast off their mild
and staid retiring winter manner
throwing out their blossom’s banners
to catch a bee or beetle’s fancy
drawing them into a tryst
while the sun drives off the mist
in morning glow like yellow tansy.
The stars of Earth shine in the trees
where magnolias catch spring’s breeze.

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

Apples on a pedestal …oil painting

Apples on a pedestal (9″ x 12″)

More apples. This time there was more space to breathe around the subject and the footed bowl and background became an important part of the composition. The colours and pattern of the background looked good in my minds eye and were a pleasure to paint. The piece came together really smoothly.

Tom’s poem approaches the subject from another viewpoint compared to the previous apple poem …another kind of knowledge. Once again it seems just right for the painting!

Upon a pedestal ensconced
above a blue tabula rasa
just waiting for some renaissance
artiste, who from forbidden Lhasa,
high in Himalayan climes,
has walked the paths and learned the rhymes
of gurus old and lamas young
until she knows what’s wrought or wrung
from patterns cast upon the wall
of Plato’s cave are hardly all
that we can know when truth is sung:
for the artist sees the deep
where hidden knowledge lurks and leaps.

image (c) 2018 Hilary Farmer

poem (c) 2018 TJ Radcliffe

bright peonies …oil painting

bright peonies (8″ x 10″)

I have always loved peonies – those fragrant and generous blooms! This painting is on linen instead of the smooth gessoed panels I usually use. I do love the subtle texture of linen. Maybe that was why, but the painting came together more easily than usual.

Here is Tom’s evocative and powerful poem for these peonies.

Standing stems bear waving flags
of armies conquering the sky
with a joy that never sags
charging forth to do or die
in defense of beauty wild
against the mud that’s ranked and filed
upon the ugly battlefield
where the flowers will not yield
to cold order, hate’s command
that all that lives conform or lose,
bright peonies will dance and choose
to hold their ground and make their stand.
In all the universe so cold
It’s only this we have to hold.

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

Joy’s apples …oil painting

Joy’s apples (6″x6″)

Sometimes, the paint and the brush and the moment all come together …a joyful afternoon of painting!

Tom’s poem takes an interesting turn – a meditation on the role of apples in the enlightenment? I love it!

These golden apples in the sun
fallen from the rooted branch
by the force of Newton spun
into a tale, an avalanche
of strange insight to the world
while through vasty depths we’re hurled
by gravity, momentum too
lifted up by mighty thews
of mystery: the apple’s fall
set in motion worlds and more
dancing ‘cross the spinning floor
led by giants, standing tall.
An apple drops in autumn light
and banishes the endless night.

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

a different beauty …oil painting

a different beauty (6″ x 6″)

The common name of this flower is “spiderwort” but it is much prettier than its name! Apparently, it was native to North America but taken all over the world as an ornamental plant. My title comes from Tom’s lovely poem which celebrates another aspect of this flower!

Behind the darkness lies the light
lurking in the summer sky
as a mouse moves through the night
cool and dark beneath the lie
of leaves that shelter Earth’s rich loam
where small creatures make their homes
hiding from the solar glare
‘neath the flowers unaware
of all the beauty that we see
in petals bright and pistils bare
they know a different beauty there
of secret spaces, safe and free.
Do not forget the life that hides
Beneath this garden’s underside.

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