Pink Magnolias

Magnolias have the most delicious sweet fruity smell that can fill a block a mile long. Most magnolias flower on bare stems in late winter/spring, producing beautiful creamy-white flowers for many months. The gorgeous white saucer shaded blooms have a light to deep pink or purplish-pink colour to their petals. Close-ups

Irises

One of the advantages of being an artist is if you need a painting to fill a corner you don’t have to search far. We have this funny narrow wall at an angle in one of our guest rooms, and I cannot put a mirror there so I thought of a painting as a solution….

Lilacs

Lilacs By Amy Lowell Lilacs,False blue,White,Purple,Color of lilac,Your great puffs of flowersAre everywhere in this my New England.Among your heart-shaped leavesOrange orioles hop like music-box birds and singTheir little weak soft songs;In the crooks of your branchesThe bright eyes of song sparrows sitting on spotted eggsPeer restlessly through the light and shadowOf all Springs.Lilacs in…

Violaceous lilacs

I love lilacs for so many reasons, their beautiful blooms, their exquisitely pungent perfume, and most of all their colour. I was trying to think of all the colour names that come to mind when painting lilacs…. Lavender, violet, plum, magenta, amarinthine blue, violet amethyst, mulberry, mauve, periwinkle, purple, pomegranate, wine red, lilac, white

I can definitely smell the Dahlias!

I love the smell of dahlias – it is like nothing else, with a slightly bitter note. This bowl of dahlias are inspired by the beautiful dahlias @adeneflowers, a flower and fruit farm in Wolseley about 120 km’s outside of Cape Town or an hour and a half drive. those pungent colours and their unique smell…

Flowers by the bucket

This is a large painting. 100 cm X 100 cm X 4 cm, acrylic on canvas mounted on a large square board. This painting was an experiment of techniques on how to create different types of flowers. I rather like how the bucket came out. I do think the background and the flowers are a…

Bowl of flowers

Not only are flowers beautiful additions to our homes, weddings and special events, they also have different meanings attached to them. Flower language – or floriography – is the art of flower symbolism, which varies depending on the type and colour of the flower. I love flowers, I love them in the garden, and especially in…

All things painterly…

The last while I have been trying to force myself to loosen my painting style and move in a more painterly direction.  I started using a combination of palette knives and colour shapers together with a brush to force myself to stop worrying about keeping things inside the lines.  Rather than relax my brushwork I…

Painterly palette

My work the last while has been moving in a more painterly direction relying more on colour, texture and stroke to express form. Using a palette knife and colour shapers have made this a natural progression in my work. Detail now needs to be simplified, and alternative solutions found to creating shape rather than using…

Delft and Dutch irises

Flowers remain a passion as do blue and white jugs, ginger jars and temple jars.  This beautiful blue and white jug was begging for an arrangement of Dutch Irises. Paint was also thickly applied with various shaped palette knives to create a loose impression of what I was seeing before me. Much like a flower…

Cosmos fields

Before we were married Phil and I drove up to St Lucia (in KZN) from Cape Town over the Easter Weekend in April of 1989.  We drove through the Free State and it was one of those unforgettable experiences that will remain forever etched in my mind. All I could see was sandstone mountains, flaming…