Floral Lights

(click on thumbnail to see larger print)

No collection of print art would be complete without including the colors of the flowers around us.  There is always a delightful image wherever there is a bloom.  The colorful florescence of our wild and cultivated plants can be found everywhere, each bloom perfect and poised to extend its beauty far into the future long after the warmth of summer has cooled.

I think that is the reason why so many flower prints exist.  We like to freeze time and the images that remind us of those times past and the bright memories that faded with them.

Here are just a few prints that remind me of all the warm days of summer.  I enjoy walking into a room where these bright images are displayed.  These prints can make a cold or overcast day seem much more tolerable and serve as reminders of what is to come.

I will start with the exotic. A “Banana Flower” which produced fifty or more bananas for me last summer.  What a culinary treat and what a beautiful print.  One may not recognize the small bananas above the flower and having never seen a banana tree in bloom, may not have any idea what it is at which they are looking.

Continuing with the exotic, I’ve included two orchid images in this collection.  These were blooms I enjoyed at my sister’s home and I could not ignore them.

A “Brown-eyed Susan” clump volunteered in the middle of my garden.  This is a late summer climax in all its glory.  I could not bear the thought of pulling it out so I left it.

Each winter to early spring, the camellias bloom.  What a flash of color.  Each bush displaying its own radiance.  The spent peddles carpet the ground beneath the plants and extends the display for several weeks.

A walk in the country reminds me that I can find lovely colors outside the garden.  I particularly liked finding this “Big-leaf Magnolia.”  These understory trees are becoming increasingly scarce as suburbia presses into the forest.  Once one encounters this magnolia in the wild with its leaves approaching two feet, one will not forget how impressive it is.  When it is in bloom, one will stop in amazement.

“Contrasting Colors” is a wonderful image of both the china berry and the honeysuckle found together.  It almost looks like a city park setting but, in actuality, it was a roadside wasteland.

My mother’s “Confederate Lily” continues to bloom in my garden.  This somewhat scraggly blooming lily can assume an elegance that often will surprise me.

I am including two images that I enjoyed from my patio.  This is an area that was professionally landscaped so the flowers are those found in commercial plantings.  “Iris” and “Patio Trumpets” display two methods of presenting a flower within a print.  The first is to dramatically delete the background changing it to black, which pushes the color of the bloom forward.  One first saw this technique over simplified in the “velvet paintings” of the 1960s – Not my favorite art form – but when creatively incorporated into these fine art prints of colorful flowers, it works well.

The second method shown here is to accentuate the foliage by intensifying the greens and let the flower frame itself  in the image.  Note that there seems to be a tomato plant in this print.

The blues and violets against the green leaves found in both “Moon Flower” prints will accent a room beyond ones wildest dreams.  I have had rooms designed around these prints.  They are powerful visual additions to anyone’s home, as is the case with the hot pink of the “Queen Elizabeth Rose.”

I enjoy finding my compositions in close to my subjects.  This print will flood a room with this rich pink color.  One really has to see these prints framed and on a wall to fully appreciate what impact they have on a room.

Chinese “Wisteria” has such a bad reputation as a garden specimen.  I love its rush of violet color and heavenly scent each spring and would not consider my garden complete without it.  I will just continue to put forth the effort to contain it.  Here is the simple beauty of the flower.  I wish I could capture the sweet smell and the sounds of the honeybees that find it irresistible.

This early morning pearl sprayed with dew will get your day started on the right note.  Just place it on the kitchen wall and enjoy your coffee.