FLOWER PAINTINGS. Hello spring.

These are old and new paintings I made weeks or years ago but nonetheless this spring’s bouquet. Brush a petal past your winter’s cheek today, drink it in.

I must say my interest in painting flowers does not diminish.  Nor is it becoming a bore of routine.  There is endless surprise to colors laid next to each other, the weight of pigment, the rush to the senses from it. The way the inside of a white petal will steep down into gray shadow, the electrifying incandescence of light on its interior from a spot of sun, the brackish green/black soil at its base and the shock of lavender deepest inside which cannot be from any less than the joy of being alive. And that’s only one flower! One swoosh of a velvet petal, one darting cluster of color having the power to fascinate, to probe every sense of its observer.

Gardens the hemisphere over are coming to life once more. Spring siren’s call is on. And the human, animal, insect, reptile heart lifted by its power.

Original Oil Painting by Expressionist Artist Barbara Sparhawk

THE HAWKS PERCH GALLERY   9700 CARMEL VALLEY ROAD

CARMEL VALLEY

Sparhawk Garden & Meadow

Last winter. I sort of remember my hands stretched out in front of me, blindfolded by fear, stumbling through the chaos of what had been and was no more. Then I found a teeny new studio. Which had a massive garden. Which seized my heart on day one. Which surely angels led me to.

Moi: It’s PERFECT!

Real Estate Agent: It is?

It is. I’ll let you see for yourself. It had exquisite bare bone established, fallen, gone to seed and cluttering dead branched shrubs and trees. I watered, fertilized, tilled, moved rocks, opened to sunlight, transplanted, and incrementally added every flowery small cheapo thing I could get from Grigg’s Nursery down the block. That was the new. The old have revived, blossomed, stretched arms to the sun. Brutally pruned cherry tree, hedges brush-cut before they could flower, tall reedy Oriental Lilies chopped to knee high are all now an hourly windsong thrice the height of yore. Just started really. This is the beginning and I am very proud. And yes, naturally, I painted the chairs.

Ah, August you darling you, let joy be unconfined……..