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

Spring’s crown …mandala

Spring’s crown

A celebration of Spring! I just got a new watercolour set and may have been a little over-excited – the colours are so vibrant! Anyway, it is definitely in the spirit of the piece.

Tom’s haiku expresses its essence.

bold compact centre
buds brazenly unfolding
spring’s bright laurel crown

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

gratitude mandala…

gratitude mandala

I decided to try something somewhere in between the mandala method I have been doing recently which are intuitive and unplanned and the ones I was doing earlier which were fairly structured. The idea (we’ll see if it continues) is to meditate on a word and then see how it impacts what I do. In this case, the imagine sprang into my mind pretty much as drawn so I sketched it out to make sure the celtic knots would work and then inked it. The butterfly was a late addition to the party but I think he belongs.

Tom’s poetic meditation on gratitude:

Complex weaving of our lives
into beauty unexpected
lifting us to build and thrive
keeping true and undeflected
by the buffeting of days
that would push us from our ways
running side-by-side through time
steady on along the line
that arcs from start to end, a bow
of light refracted in the dew
between we happy, lucky two
to fly together, high and low.
Whatever else tomorrow brings
Two voices each to each we sing.

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