Applause Carol thisis beautifully done my friend!!

Outstanding work. God bless.

lovely

Absolutely fascinating and marvelously realized !!

Beautiful & sweet peas have a wonderful scent. Snow still!!!!!

gorgoeous work

wow and wow

Bless you for this delicate and quite delightful creation Carol and of course as ever I always love the prose you provide us as extra treat for your viewers. You are amazing at painting flowers and as I have said before you are so gifted. I hope Cee Cee is keeping you smiling, hugs Jane xx

I'm back for a short visit, but I will do 3 or 4 of your images in the time I'm back. I've not commented in your gallery in a while, but I've sat with your work many times. Maybe I just couldn't find the words for a while, but the feelings have always run deep. I hope you're doing well, Carol, I know you saw family recently, and that you have a new, beautiful addition to your life (CeeCee), for which I'm very happy. Your art, in the meantime, is as deep as ever; and I know we only see some of what you're doing; as always, it's a taste of how many places you travel in your work. I begin with this tonight, and I'll get to more in the next day or two; but this is a most lush place to start.

In this bouquet, you're dealing with lots of smaller, fragile leaves, with much convolution, furling, etc. You articulate the furls and convolutions beautifully, there isn't a single flower which you haven't addressed fully; the detail is utterly striking. And still, you maintain a complete sense of the 'whole'---this is one bouquet (well, it's two, but I see it as one made of two, not as two)---it's not merely a portrait of lots of little flowers. And you painted 'waves' of hue---two or three waves of darker reds and purple-reds (really, dark peach reds, or melon reds as you suggest in your description) running through the center, for example. You have a few standout 'waves' of hue in this bouquet. And striking highlights of bright white and yellow. You balance out the intense purples with lighter pinks---mostly on the two sides of the bouquet rather than in the center---giving it a beautifully composed look. I assume these compositional choices have been intuitive for some time, for you; but it shows that your intuition works in highly poetic ways, creating melody lines across your flower portraits, meta-lines, meta-areas, etc. The white-outlining is particularly beautiful---it's very painterly, and feels like oil; and it gives a transcendent feeling to the whole, making it shine...

The stems---being thin and plentiful---shoot into this mass with real resolution. You gave beautiful detail to them as well, with white highlighting along the stems. Though you have two bouquets---from the two openings in this cornucopia-like vase---they join into one, which is why I speak of them as one. They really are, even though they originate as two.

Your background is one of your many delicate and so-articulate 'echo' backgrounds, where you echo the main forms in whispering forms all around them---here, in whispering larger flowers, as if the universe were resonating with the energies of the flowers, themselves. This is a real theme in your work---like a gigantic object falling into a pond, your flowers fall into the world surrounding them, and create ripples. That's how many of your background flowers feel to me: like whispers of the flowers in front, like ripples created in their image, rippling in space as if in water.

You (as always) paint beautiful swaths of pure hue through those background flowers and stems, incl beautiful light and dark greens on the bottom, and light pinks and reds on top. Like clouds or mist, they just creep up through the forms, like a spiritual rouge. And you have a characteristic burst of light on top of the bouquet(s), like the light of the flowers took over. It's like a sun. A triumphal light atop, shining down on everything.

The vase (just as an object) is so unusual: A 19th C-ish design, with two vases, which you color from greens (at bottom) to deep peach-purples (on top). I don't know if you painted this from a real vase, but it has your art all over it. It looks like it came straight from inside you. Of course, we see the peas in the bottom of the vase---I had forgotten how lush the small flowers of a pea-plant were; so it's stunning to see the peas at bottom, knowing they're intimately related to the huge plethora going on above them. Also, you painted beautiful greens in the ceramic (or whatever the vase is made of).

And then there's your typical deep green as the "foundation" of the piece---you've used that family of hues before; a 'ground' of very deep green, from which your flower images often arise. And the vase almost seems to be floating, rather than firmly setting on this green surface...

Another symphonic portrait of flowers, this one with lots of small flowers all woven into a single tapestry. The image bursts triumphantly into light, having risen out of a deep earthen green on the bottom. (Journey from 'darkness to light'.) And in no part of the painting is there anything less than shimmering energy and very positive, loving feeling; and, of course, consummate mastery of form, hue, etc; and the poetry of nature, as journeyed through your own poetry. (The two poetries meet in your works.) Gorgeous and effulgent, a beautiful painting. It must be luscious, full and enveloping in person.

Mark, thanks so much for your wonderful comment. I really had fun creating this artwork. First, I adore sweet peas. I love their colors, their delicacy, their abundance, and I tried to express this in the work. They always bring me joy when I see them, and a touch of sadness as I know they only bloom for such a short time. That's why I enjoy immortalizing them, and all flowers, to keep their beauty blooming forever. I really fell right into these sweet peas as I was painting, their colors and shapes so soothing to me. And when I am inside all this beauty it is a kind of Zen experience, a healing and heavenly place to be. How can one feel anything but awe and gratitude when inside something as exquisite, and natural, and innocent as a flower?