Pink Peonies in a Tarnished Silver Beaker

9" x 12", Oil on Board, $100.00 SOLD

I really had a lot of fun doing this painting. Peonies

are one of my favorite flowers, and I look forward

to their coming out every year. We have a couple

of plants in front of our house, but they don't get

enough sun. I treasured the few blooms we got,

but these I got at the supermarket. They were

surprisingly affordable.

I did this over a sketch, but I took a lot of liberties

with the flowers. I had to be a bit tighter with the

cup, just because of the structure. Sometimes I

think I must have been a manuscript illuminator

in another lifetime, because for some reason I really

get a bang out of painting things like those tiny dots

of light, light yellow on the cup rim and base. Maybe

because it reminds me of early Renaissance art, which

I adore.

It was was fun, because the rest of the painting got

to be kind of slapdash, and painting lines of trans-

parent, very brilliant colors through passages of

thick white. You never know what's going to happen...

I think I may do some more peonies tomorrow.