Michael and Michelle are my awesome brother and sister-in-law. For Christmas, I decided to give them a painting of their wedding flower: daffodils.
This was super fun to make. I started impulsively, making abstract splotches of yellow, blue, and green before I had any final piece in mind. Once I had a color composition I liked, I used quick strokes of white and blue to erase as little of each yellow splotch as possible while revealing the form of a daffodil. I’m quite confident that I wouldn’t have come up with the variances in size and direction, nor in the off-the-frame flowers if I hadn’t been following previously abstract impulses. Next, I used as few strokes as I could manage to mark off the petals, and voila! the flowers were done, floating in space.
Next, I chose a grid that interacted with the flowers nicely and laid down stems, leaves, and grasses based on the grid. Then the hard part started. For a long time, I couldn’t find a color balance for the stems and background that I liked. Then, on an impulse that felt like giving up, I laid out the palette I’d chosen geometrically, with the lightest background color framing the center, the mid tone around it, and my darkest tone across two corners. I’d expected to paint over it right away, but I loved it. After some final color work, the painting was done.
I love the calm bounciness of this piece… its dignity and joy. Painted in acrylic.