Recently, on Valentines day, flowers arrived at my door in fresh condition, a bouquet much appreciated and subsequently watched over as the blooms matured and finally went to seed. Although I do not paint from photographs, I love photographing the progress of the flowers as they age towards death with each stage offering new inspiration for the painter. Capturing the sharp definition of negative space is what one “goes for” in tulips as they age, bending over as they do with such graceful curves.

It’s remarkable how tulips open wide into a full beauty yielding up their velvet like core of seeds. For some, this stage of Nature’s aging might seem grotesque and the flowers would be pitched in the dump. Yet it is this stage of aging that invites expression. As blooms age we might choose to intervene and select healthier younger blooms to make new arrangements and that’s OK too.

As artists we do love cut flowers because they have a life energy that is different from the purely visual delight of artificial silk or plastic ones even if it they are aesthetically manufactured. Cut flowers, to the artist, are a gift of life that invites the creative spirit but the creations “to be” cannot indefinitely be procrastinated. Painting flowers may be “still life” but that stillness is deceptive. Over the period of a day or a week the flowers change although not as fast as the change one must contend with in drawing or painting animals at the zoo or people in the park.

I respect the voluptuousness of the wide-open mature tulip. As a woman I hope I can continue to express lifeforce and beauty as I age. Beauty within that comes from above, that is not contrived, yet shines for others to see. Environmentally speaking, I know that flowers take a lot of water, when commercially produced, and that demand can harm some economies, yet I contine to love the people in my life who “say it with flowers”. And I promise paintings in return.