New paintings, hot off the easel, and some thoughts on art and life ...

These are hydrangeas, in case you were wondering. I often paint flowers from my own garden, but I don't grow hydrangeas, so the blooms in this painting had to come from my favorite local flower shop, Bunches in Los Gatos. The flowers at Bunches are often unusual, always beautiful.

While I was painting this, I was reading a novel called "The Language of Flowers," by Vanessa Diffenbaugh.  The plot centers on the old-fashioned use of flowers to communicate.  Different flowers had different meanings, such as 'desire,' 'maternal  love,' 'frienship,' 'ambition,' 'dignity,' etc., and flower bouquets could be sent to someone to give a particlar message.  Hydrangeas, I learned, meant 'cold-hearted.' Yikes! Not the message I thought would go with this painting! But it could still be a tender, pleading message, as in the old song "Your Cold, Cold Heart." It's a great song - recorded by many different singers, including Nora Jones, but it was acually written by the late country crooner Hank Williams.

Well, anyway - this is a painting about blue flowers and what it means to any given viewer is up for debate.  I painted it simply because I love the intense blues and mauves. I used a very close cropped compsosition because I wanted the painting to focus on just the play of light on the flowers - all those lovely big blues.