Fluorescent Dahlia

In my artists philosophy I write of one of my earliest childhood memories of escaping the watchful eye of my mother to pluck one of her precious dahlias from her garden. It was the garden equivalent of an orchestra and I had fallen in love with the most beautifully lush dahlia. It was a magnificent brilliant magenta and purple and I wanted it. I must have been about 3 heading on towards 4 at the time and my mom had told me that under no circumstances was I to pick the flower. But the colour hypnotized me and in my childlike mind flowers that I revered were mine to be picked! My reaction to this flower was instinctual and primitive, and I spent the entire day trying to escape from the house in order to pick it. Finally, much to my mother’s horror and my absolute delight, I was successful. I can still remember the smell and the thrill of finally being in possession of my prize. I still carry the impact of that flower’s beauty and colour with me to this day.

The other half of the story that doesn’t always get told is why my mother was angry with me. Yes she had told me not to pick it, but like most children of age 3 I ignored her and I plucked this flower off at the neck sans even an inch of stem! It was her prize dahlia and she couldn’t even put it in a vase because it had no stem! I was sobbing and I distinctly remember my grandmother taking charge of the situation telling me, “Don’t worry darling the magical thing about dahlias are they look like lotus flowers and they float.” She put the dahlia in a dish of water next to my bed for me so I could watch it float like a water lily, I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen!

I have been wanting to paint a dahlia for a while now and although not the same colour it is similar in shape to the one I picked well over fourty years ago…..

The choice of colour palette was triggered by two tubes of paint I found in a store in Dubai. A fluorescent orange and a fluorescent red. I was looking for an excuse to use these two intriguing colours in a painting and it occurred to me a dahlia would be the perfect flower for the exercise….

The other choice of colours developed from there. I didn’t use a huge amount of the neon colours, but I blended it in with the other selection of colours and it gave me these rather brilliant effervescent colours which resulted in a very bright luminescent painting.