May you have flowers!

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How good that our celebration of Christmas falls at the darkest time of the year.  Granted, the timing falls in line with ancient pagan celebrations.  But the birth of Jesus Christ is the birth of the One True Light of the World.  And the darkest days around the winter solstice signal the gradual ascent of the sun back to our hemisphere.  

Meanwhile Psalm 139:12 tells us,“Indeed the darkness shall not hide from You, but the night shines as the day; the darkness and the light are both alike to You,” NKJV

In our Lord Jesus Christ, there is no darkness.  When HE decrees darkness on the earth, through the rotation of our planet around the sun, life continues to thrive in the secret darkness beneath the earth.  And out of that darkness, comes new life—the flowers of spring.

We have an abundance of florists and greenhouses to span the darkening days of the year; yet there is nothing like the real thing—-blooms and greenery bursting forth from warm soil.  Fortunately for the artist, a semblance of new life in spring can prevail throughout the year!

Merry Christmas, to you readers who are literally all over the world, in case I cannot get back to this blog until next year.  I appreciate you so much!

And may you always have flowers!

Margaret L. Been — December 16th, 2018

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The Paint is Still Flowing

I came up with another excuse for putting off blogging:  my mouse died.  After countless years with my pet mouse, he (it) bit the dust.  I simply cannot get the hang of keyboarding with my pinkie.  But now I have a brand new purple mouse from Office Max, and I’m eager to blog.  I LOVE the color purple!

Obviously, the long skinny panel above wouldn’t fit into my phone camera without showing the surround of our front door and a rug.  But you get the idea that by February in Wisconsin those of us who do not care to ski, skate, or roll in snow are dreaming—even pining—for spring.  Nowhere does this longing express itself more blatantly than in our home.  Flowers are blooming all over the place!

This gallery wrap canvas experienced many mutations.  The pink at the top began as foxgloves, those deadly but lovely bell-shaped flowers that always remind me of Beatrix Potter’s foolish duck who laid her eggs under the “protection” of the Foxy Gentleman who lounged among the foxgloves.

My foxgloves were rather ugly, so I tried to morph them into tulips.  The tulips were equally unpleasant, so I dabbed away—adding gouache—until the tulips became those fragrant blossoms that most anyone can render convincingly:  lilacs.

Yes, May!!!  Next down the line were purple irides (otherwise known as irises), something I can normally manage to paint because of their ruffles.  Then more lilacs or maybe pink irides, and finally my beloved mertensia—Virginia bluebells.

A lot of gouache was layered onto this watercolor flower arrangement, giving the panel a nice textured effect.  I painted the sides with acrylic, because when I spray the finished panel with an acrylic fixative for preservation it is easy to cover the flat surface—but the sides are harder to spray.  I want to make sure my gallery wrap panels will last, at least for a few decades and perhaps longer.

In a little over two weeks, daylight saving begins.  Hurray!  And it’s already spring within the walls of our home!  🙂

Margaret L. Been — 2/23/18

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