Cherry trees

Branchbrook Park, Newark, NJ

Tulips 3

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Monumental Tulips 2 FINAL

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Monumental Tulips 2 day 3

Monumental Tulips 2 day 2

Monumental Tulips 2 day 1

Painting for a competition - has to be tulips as subject matter. Of course I'm making them as architectural as possible. Kind of monumental from this angle.

Rand Park, Montclair, NJ

Floral Experiments

Tacky?

I worked on a large painting all day yesterday with the intention of setting it inside this old window. I think the foliage is too heavy amd overpowers the flowers, I should have stopped with just a few leaves. Now it looks a little too crafty. Oh well - maybe someone will purchase it this weekend.

Daffodils

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Page from my sketchbook. I was sketching a typical NYC street scene in the upper left - depressed person standing near some trash bags at the curb. The trash bags fascinated me so I focused on them for awhile at the bottom of the page. Later I came across these flowers in my friend George's lobby and I was intrigued by the shapes of the petals, especially the translucent shadows created where the white petals overlapped. In some way they reminded me of the forms of the wrinkles in the trash bags - so I just sketched them right on top of the other image.

I made a small piece based on the sketchbook page using some of the forms of the trash bags as an abstract background for the flowers.

Cherry Blossoms

Cherry trees will be blooming in Newark's Branch Brook Park for the next couple of weeks.

Named for a branch brook that flowed through the valley into the Passaic River, the stream that remains, and much of the surrounding landscape, still retain a natural appearance. More than 2,000 cherry trees that blossom during April are greater both in variety and number than the famed Washington, D.C., display—the result of a 1927 gift from the Bamberger and Mrs. Felix Fuld family. At its height the Cherry Blossom Festival attracts over 10,000 people a day.

More info on this year's Cherry Blossom Festival which runs April 13th-April 20th.

...and the sketch done on the train

Learning a new tool. Posting from my phone. Irises on my morning walk

Tulips

Still under the weather today - but what better way to cheer up than capture some tulips. This is a style of working that I learned from a good friend in Maine - Virginia Forrest. She's finishing up a show of her work at the Alewives Gallery if your in Maine this weekend: http://www.alewivesgallery.com/quilting_show_wmv.htm

The delicate shapes and contours of the flowers and leaves were lost when I moved from the line drawing to the painting so I put them back in with pen and ink. I like the stained glass quality that seems to go well with the color palette. I also like the simplicity of the shapes - a quality I'd like to capture in more of my work.