the colors and shapes are so beautiful

Awesome creation , the colors are absolutely wonderful !!!!

Stunning Carol!

This is cool Carol!!

Amazing work and dedication. God bless.

Simple terrific! An instant favourite!

It's been a few weeks since I commented on your amazing work, as I closed in that time (ie, my condo), had a deluge of post-closing work that I hadn't expected, got sick again, and generally hibernated. (I also will write soon, I promise.) But I've seen all your uploads, including this series and this variation of the series. I knew it was for the anniversary of your marriage to LJ, but Unfortunately it was 4 days after my closing, and I was too done in to leave the kind of comment I wanted to leave. ("Beautiful work" just wasn't gonna do it.) So I'm commenting now, and ask your indulgence that I waited so long. But it was worth the wait.

In recent weeks, you've posted a number of newer or different styles. Experimentations, different approaches, some even "collage" like. It's been very exciting. With this image, however, you are back to a style that everyone of your fans recognizes, no doubt, and for good reason. It's filled with your most swirling vision, depth and passion. I see some newness in it too---in some simpler rushing lines (upper right, and lower left, in the blue-purple 'rushing' section beneath the halfway-point of the painting), and in other things I can't name. Maybe it's just me, but I feel this is infused with some new techniques. But regardless, it's always new internally. If one could photograph the rose's innermost life, ie its inner energies and powers, this is what the photograph would look like. And not just because of the rose itself---which is amazing enough---but for its background, which pulses and whooshes in harmony with the rose. As if the rose's powers shaped the whole cosmos around it.

Einstein postulated that the whole cosmos was curved by the gravitational forces emitted by objects within it. Bodies in space...He said, in essence, that our old concept of the universe (as empty space broken up by celestial bodies) wasn't nearly truthful enough: To him, these bodies produced immense waves of attraction and repulsion as they literally warp the space around them. To Einstein, space was one huge energy field.

I've always contended that artists are scientists of a sort---they paint, poeticize, compose the inner energies of the cosmos. Your painting proves my point. This isn't 'just' a rose: It's the whole energy field inside a rose. And the energies of the cosmos portrayed 'through' a rose. To be more yogic, the whole energy field of the cosmos is contained 'within' the rose (as it is inside all of us): This rose doesn't require normal clothes, fabrics, colors, accessorizing (etc) to bring out its inner essence: This rose is SHOUTING its inner essence, all by itself. Its garments ARE its inner energies. It makes us realize---as often happens in your paintings---that even the lush and opulent rose is nothing compared to the powers inside it. Georgia O'Keeffe understood that inner life (she did with all plant life). So have a few others. You do, to the core. I've written this before, but "rose" is related to the sanskrit "rishi"---the root meaning "nectar". A rishi, of course, is a sage; but she or he sees and shares nectars. The rose was so-named, probably, because its fragrance and beauty were considered nectars. So there's a link between a rose and a wise soul. They both have wisdom.

Your other 2 uploads in this series show different but complete worlds. But this one is like you'd put all the possible 'faces' of the rose into one painting: The infrared lens is on, the x-ray lens is on, and whoosh: We see the whole inner huge-souled explosive rose.

It comes from your whooshing strokes, and---in this series---the way they emanate outwards (mostly), like energies from a blazing center. And your strokes become not only liquid---another common element in your flower paintings---but, here, a luminous gel-like light. While actual stars change colors over vast ranges of time, yours show all colors at once: It's not time that changes them, here, its where we sit in the flower. You've compacted all of time in one huge piece of floral real estate. And some of the petals look---esp in this multi-colored version---like they're made of a silk. Satin spun from light.

Then the leaves are an unusually bright green---they glow with luminous yellows, esp on the bottom. And you have dabs of purples in there, and dark rusts. You show your physical painting background in passages like this: There's something about having paint in front of us that makes an artist want to dive in and add that extra dab of color, that "totally other" color. Your digital paintings have never shied away from those choices: It's great that you still create these as if they were physical. I love the colors you throw into a green leaf, or a purple petal. The 'other' colors. They're bold and beautiful.

The sky is a series of cosmic bursts: This is a cosmos in-tune with the rose. And sections of your sky (maybe there are roses back there too, I don't know) collide with each other. The sky's made up of sections colliding with each other. This is definitely one of your cosmic pieces. And the sides of the image are filled with more rushing hues---on the right, you have deep blankets of ochre browns, and one 'bulb' of purple that look like a big bulge with paint oozing down it. Lots of deep shadow too. While on the left, you have sections of flame. And then, your 'ground' intimates a deep hidden ocean of root colors, a place from which everything emanates. You do that with grounds, you make grounds of energy and spirit more than of "land". Then you add butterflies, which radiate with the hues of the rainbow and probably of the chakras. They've taken on all the energies of the rose. Or, better, the rose has brought out all their inner energies. (The way love does...) And they're on each side of the rose, which speaks to how lovers come together but have their own worlds simultaneously. And they're drawn together by a cosmic force, a big collision of energies and lights...as if lovers were merely following the 'call' of those lights. Because, for all the tumult, turmoils and explosions that love creates, the call keeps lovers coming back, perching on the same flowers, seeking the same source...All that is very strong in this painting.

The whole composition, to me, isn't so much a 'single painting' as an epicenter of colliding energies: You captured that collision point. (More word roots---bear with me:) "Collide" comes from the roots "with" and "to strike together". When two souls strike each others' bells, their chakras, their virginal musical surfaces, they set in-motion each others' music-making sinews...they collide. It's a blazing, positive thing. It indicates, to me, the explosion that happens as beings meet---suddenly space between them is unified. If one came from another planet and didn't know 'roses' and 'leaves' and 'butterflies'---but they could still see forms and colors---they'd see in this a central point of explosion, a place where forces collide and produce all the hues in the cosmos, all its energies. As if to say, "out of that collision, love emerges". Words strain, but somewhere in them is my feeling. The two butterflies know where to go...they fly to the source; which is where love comes from in the first place...

Well I've been at this an hour (including editing---believe me, my first draft of comments in your gallery need clarifying VERY badly! they come out in a mass, and I have to put them into 'sentences')---so let me end with this: People ask why the ancient Hindus created those endless jungles of beings, their vast tapestry of lives upon lives, all dancing across each other's paths with multiple arms and legs and so on. This painting could answer them. Because, like many of your other paintings, it shows what's going on inside us. Those vast Hindu tapestries are paintings of what's inside us. And then, any scientist will tell you that this is what seems to be going on in the cosmos itself. If the yogis were right---that the cosmos was projected out of a core mind, then paintings like this are proof of that...because you've painted a personal version of that very cosmos. And what 'finishes' it is the two butterflies which, when coming to rest on the rose, take on its spectral colors and immense energies; or (better) the rose brings those energies out in them. (I'm repeating.) Maybe the butterflies know that they're there to do just that; and then to share what they received there. Even if one didn't know anything about you or LJ, they'd know that something huge is going on here; that these butterflies have connected to something cosmic. It's a big cosmic painting filled with your vision of energy, hue, radiance and so on; and pulsing with mysterious chasms. (You can see why I needed a little time to write a comment.) A major work, Carol. A big collision of the inner energies of love.

All I can say is 'WOW', what an awesome and amazing critique. Thank you for honoring my work as you do, Mark. Your observations and insights are so inspiring. You are right in your observation that I did try to express the energy of this rose, in the colors and brush strokes. It is something that every flower has and these energies speak to me. Perhaps that's why I love painting flowers, exploring and feeling their inner essence that goes beyond their beauty. And so interesting what you said about the link between the rose and a wise soul. I do feel this wisdom in flowers, (trees, too). It seems they attract and hold so much from the Universe within them. And though they have amazing power while they are living, the memory of that power, and our experience, lingers, and is born again in a new bloom. Sometimes when I paint flowers I see colors that are quite unusual, as if they didn't belong, and yet there is no wrong color or combination in nature, and that always excites me. I am, always have been, and always will be a color fanatic. And flowers send me into another Universe. And your observation about the two butterflies is right on. I wanted them to be sharing the experience (and love) of the rose, and yet show their independent spirits as well. They have their own feelings, their own perceptions, and yet something about sharing something so beautiful and pure together makes it very special. LJ and I did share something very special in our time together and you said it best, as it was embodied in this vibrant rose, like … 'A big collision of the inner energies of love.'