24″ x 24″, oil on gallery wrapped canvas

This painting was inspired by a few of my favourite garden flowers. I see these two types of flowers as I walk up to the front door of my house. My whole entire reasoning behind making this painting was wondering if these two seemingly clashing colours could live in harmony in one painting. What I found initially was that the pink of the coneflower was too pastelly and the orangey red of the gaillardia too vibrant, and so I had to add vibrance to the pink in order to tie them together. I used the same deep red in both flowers so that they would look related. The painting is not yet finished (I still want to add some details to the centers of the flowers), but I am happier with where it is headed. I again added a mountain range in as an afterthought, simply because my evenly spaced flowers all over turned out to be one of those composition faux-pas. I wanted to give it a sunset vibe too, possibly adding some golden highlights to the flowers, but I know that there’s a good possibility of ruining it at that point. The circle I sketched in for the sun, actually reminds me of a moon and I may just leave it that way. I’m not sure if these thoughts are helpful, but I know I like to hear the thought process for other artists, as it helps you to understand where the work is coming from.

God asked me to delete my facebook and instagram accounts a few months ago. I was worried about what I would do in my life in place of the scroll time, but turns out I have gotten back to photography, and also taken some online art classes, as well as started this blog, so I think it was a pretty good trade-off. The one thing I do miss is having something of an art community. I wasn’t really part of any before, but I did enjoy seeing other artist’s posts and reading feedback on my own work. But then I realized that this is my art community right now. And I must say that I am so thankful for every single one of you who follow my blog, comment, or like my posts. It really means so much to me.

All that being said, I’m very excited about this painting, and how it has progressed rather quickly from something that I hated to something that makes me smile, just because I decided to stick with it. As a recovering perfectionist, it is often tempting for me to toss a painting at the ugly phase, rather than power through. But I think the whole point of being an artist is actually to problem solve, and to power through struggles so that you can consistently create things that are representative of what you want to say or express. You are teaching your brain routes and pathways and vocabulary for all of the thoughts and beauty and ideas you gather along the way.

And as I’m ever so slowly learning, done is better than perfect! It is better to create a finished thing that you can send out into the world which may bless one person or many, than being locked in the prison of perfection (what even is perfect? and how do you know?) and never being vulnerable enough to share. We all have to start somewhere, I tell my children this all the time.

“Every artist was first an amateur.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.”
― William Faulkner