Wonderful Carol you did fantastic my friend great work

Absolutely beautiful.

wow, this is fantastic, love all you did in this artwork, you are superB

Stunning work Carol

Excellent

So good to be back in your gallery again, and as always I am never disappointed, this is so beautiful, you are so amazing! hugs Jane xx

Over the next few days, I'll comment on more of your exceptional art, and I'll start with this image this morning. It's been a while since I've sat down to penetrate your work once more---which has nothing to do with you or your work, believe me---but I knew I had to dive in and comment once more. I see everything more than once; but commenting on your work is a special and spiritual act; and I need to be in a special and receptive place to do it justice. That said, I'll start with this pulsing beauty...

While the greens are lush and very flowing, the first thing that hits one in this painting is the pinks. In your usual fashion, you use many shades of hue, from bright to intensely dark; and you striate and intersperse them with your usual handling of lighter hues---here, very vital, visceral whites---which lift the pinks into another realm. A luminous realm, at that. And this is one of your pieces where your stroke-work is supreme, pulsing through the whole like a subterranean river, giving life to everything it touches. Although that's too limiting, because a lot of other features give life to your images too: But I think when we focus on one feature, it becomes the focal 'giver', until we focus on another, where it takes over, etc. A kind of musical journey through all kinds of dominant energies...

And your strokes---very strong, with no attempt to make them neat or 'squared off' or straight---are relentless in their insistence on being felt everywhere. They're an underlying rhythm that never stops (which is why Van Gogh often comes to mind in your work, but also Bach in his repeated rhythmic lines, or the continual driving pulses of Beethoven, etc...even jazz comes to mind in your work). Your strokes take this already very complex ocean of flopping, interspersing and individually-willed petals, and gives them an electrical thrust, a series of pulses that beat through everything. So, if this looks like a gentle evocation of caressing flowers, one only has to look more closely: They'll find that the energies are huge and multi-directional. That gentleness floats on an ocean, in your work.

I've never mastered the art of conveying petals: I need all kinds of crutches to do it: The furrows and convolutions go beyond my pay grade as a draftsman (I try to convey those convolutions and furrows in my literary or musical work, but in art I'm pretty much silent at their doorstep). But your work is always very loyal to the regularity-defying, headstrong will of your petals: You capture their stubborn twists and turns, the way they defy our instinct towards 'order', how they bump into each other, curl around each other, are bold and then recessive, etc. In short, you captured the messiness of flowers, the crazy, glorious, messy cacophony of petals all bunched together in a plant, how, for all their delicacy, they're like a huge metropolis with many, many lives all bumping into and interfering with each other. So again, while first impressions are soft and caressing here, the impressions after that are like a huge jazz ensemble dancing and interspersing in a big flower street fair.

Then your whites are powerful and creamy. They really feel like pigment rather than the smoother language of photography. I don't know if you do straight oil painting---you usually post "mixed medium" work---but I can picture you doing oil paintings that jump off the canvas, with your innate sense of visceral, tactile pigments, impasto, etc. You do little to eradicate that here: You let it speak as much and as often as it needs; and it makes these flowers (and others like them in your work) very physical, very 3 dimensional and weighty. The delicacy---which is present all the same---is held aloft by throbbing muscular thrusts. And that's at least one of your trademarks, in plant painting...And the leaves almost have a sheen to them---I love how you make light and shadow on them. And the leaves directly below the flowers (their bases) are greatly convoluted, twisted and highly energized 'holders' for your flowers, undulating their ways up the stems like big corpulent snakes. They're very powerful, visceral, twisty and beast-like; and I like that you don't "pretti-fy' them. You let them be what they are in nature: Primal.

Your background is a mix of your bold hues, strokes and shapes; only as if they were soaked in a solution that made them pale, wisp-like, like memories or background thoughts---another trait in your painting that I've always loved. Above the topmost peony, the background petals glow like a background halo: They're clearly in the background, but they glow all the same. And, in the lower portion of you painting, you sink into a much more inward green, with background-whispers of pale pink. Your background mollifies and desaturates the power of your flowers and leaves, like echoes of them more than like the actual plants themselves.

And then the butterflies: These I totally didn't expect; not because you've never painted butterflies before, but because, here, you made them half butterfly/half flower (as suggested in your poem): They seem to have been birthed by the petals, emerged out of them: The butterfly in the upper right corner is like one of your peonies who decided to become a butterfly. (High goals!) So he emerges with actual peony petals and imitations of the scruffy, scraggly under-leafs of the flowers: The upper torso of that uppermost butterfly looks like it was fashioned out of those lower twisted, convoluted portions of your flowers: an amazing transformation. You make no visual apologies for this, no softening of its harshness; and I love that you allowed that in a creature so celebrated for its delicacy as a butterfly. The butterfly looks like it's on its way to plant seeds in the distance, which will, in turn, spawn flowers, then butterflies once more...Then the lower butterfly---I see two here, forgive me if I missed any others---is so ingratiated into the flowers, it seems to be blooming 'out' of them, as if it were a flower itself. It seems attached to the stems. Beautiful piece of camouflage; and the pinks around it are intense, making it very bold.

Boy do you have a lot going on in one painting...a whole world here! It's gorgeous, vital, pulsing, gloriously messy and unkempt, sensual, and unified by big pulsing inner energies. And the ability of these flowers to transform themselves into flying creatures is an added little explosion I don't think anyone comes here expecting---even though your title says so, and your poem describes. I thought it was more metaphorical: But you really did it.. You made it happen. I'll be back for more in the coming days, but this was a great place to start. You create whole worlds in these images, and if someone thinks "ah, another pretty flower painting," they have a whole other world coming. If this were wall size, It would transform the room. Great work, Carol.

Mark, thanks so much for your wonderful critique of this artwork. I'm always thrilled beyond words with your words. I adore peonies and their petals have always reminded me of butterflies, so why not create peony butterflies. I also find the underside of flowers, where the stem joins the blossom, to be fascinating and one of the most beautiful and intricate parts of a flower. So much wonderful detail and you know how I love painting detail. I'm so glad you enjoyed this work and that you honor my art with your observations. Your comment mirrors the intensity, of this work and I truly appreciate the pulsing, ever-blooming energetic life force that is you.

Excellent