“The last roses from my garden.”
The winter is coming. That’s for sure. The days are getting shorter, the weather is dump and cold and windy and grey ...
But also, means more still life painting, which is not a bad thing.
And because I discovered in my garden a few roses still in flower, I picked the last of them and did a floral setup. I used a vase we bought from a Dorset artist exhibiting a while ago at “Sculpture by the Lakes” near Dorchester named David Burns. He is based in Dorset and also teaches pottery classes and workshops.
Anyway, back to the painting ... The roses were dying when I picked them and I changed a bit the setup, after starting the painting, by adding the central rose and the buds. Although the setup itself was changing constantly, I did the painting over few days; no roses left by the time I finished, so I worked using a series of photos taken and a combination of memory and imagination. It was a good learning and involved some experimentation. For the shadow I used lapis, darkened with some transparent brown oxide. I didn’t use any medium, just turps and the canvas wasn’t tinted before painting.
So, here it is:
“The last roses from my garden.”
Oil on linen.
12” X 16” (30 X 40cm).
