Still life with three mandarins and a jug
Still Life with Three Mandarins and a Jug, Contemporary still life, oil on canvas
Artist
Still Life with Three Mandarins and a Jug, Contemporary still life, oil on canvas
Summer Bouquet, oil on canvas was painted in summer 2019.
Which I particularly love about the summers is the abundance of flowers in the garden. I usually like to have a morning stroll around the flower beds, see what is new and pick some flowers for the bouquet. Sometimes I would bring a twig from the forest or use some weeds picked among the flowers to put among the bouquet flowers.
And it is at that time that I already see the new painting I am going to paint. Although the hard work begins from that moment on, for a painting to be finished in situ questions have to be answered, one by one. Composition, colors, accents, textures…yet the best occurs when during work flow problems get solved by themselves. Itbis that type of painting when brush seems to paint on its own, yet the painting proceeds to the best possible direction. Which needs a lot of former study and hard work to be accomplished before even starting the canvad, yet is the most rewarding and happy moment for the painter.
And this canvas is among those painted seemingly by itself. Giving me the joy of creation I worked on it during last summer. The size is big enough that looking at it one gets immediately the same feeling as if the real bouquet would be in the room, wrapping our senses in the song of summer colors and shapes……..
May bouquet, painted obviously in May, in the spring of 2020, that has changed so profoundly the world we know. Yet, no matter what, the spring does come each year.
Each year makes me particularly happy to see our old garden phyladelphus is starting to bloom. Sweet scent of hundreds white little stars wraps up the garden, sun is getting warmer and in a couple of days first purple iris-es open, usually accompanied by the roses.
I guess each gardener will recognize that feeling one gets just after picking the fresh flowers to make a bouquet. Bringing all those flowers inside, one needs to find a vase big enough to display all the colors just brought in. And as you put the bouquet on the table to watch the flowers closely, even, so to say, with an inner eye, then you can see the spring avakening, bursting and flowering after a long winter. Looking closer it seems almost like flowers are dancing, moving around each other, just to reach sky and to blossom into the spring. It is a sort of vertigo like feeling. Remembering when the last spring took part one gets almost absorbed into all the colors and patterns of nature bursting into spring again.
So here it is, my May bouquet. Please, have a close look at the flowers from my garden and feel the vertigo of all the colors of a new spring……
Snowdrops are among the first flowers of spring in our country. No matter how cold the winter might be, they would find their way to show up, always. Each spring snowdrops paint whole white carpets under trees .What a view!
But there is much more diversity in these uniformly white galaxy as one could assume at a first glimpse.These white flowers may change shape,their pattern is far from uniform,mutations provide new shapes. But the sad truth is all these variants are mostly not stable in nature. So it actually is a hard work to cultivate a Galanthus nivalis cultivar of even a slight difference. And the good news? Once stable form will propagate with bulbs-by means of Fibonacci sequence which means:0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89 etc!
Anyhow, the first snowdrops bouquet each year brings the promise of warmer times to come. Tiny flowers themselves make just a small bouquet that doesn’t last much time, so flower shops usually don’t keep them. It was quite a surprise as I got a small white galanthus bouquet, nicely wrapped in red paper! I painted this still life immediately, presenting white flowers in red paper in crystal glass vase. Definitely a Galanthomania of my own!!!!
Last week I ‘ve happened to get a wonderful vintage art book. I’ve passed by a bookshelf, in public space, with a note attached on it. It read: Take with you as many as you want π Bring some you don’t need any more:)
The bookshelf was rather full. It seems people are energetically following Ms. Condo and books obviously aren’t very sparkly possession for many. Anyhow, I’ve looked closely as one never knows what can be hidden in such a library full of thrown away books. It turned out I really absolutely had to save one book, the one sitting alone among many How to do manuals, Cookbooks, Crime novels and Love stories. It hasn’t appeared as something like a new book, with the cardboard envelope even a bit torn down. But then inside this envelope, there were six lovely notebook like booklets. As I’ve read the title I’ve decided it goes with mes. For as said before: ”what is one man’s crap is another man’s treasure” .
The book is actually first part of four books series by Schmiedeberg Blume. The first tome is titled Grundlagen der Technik und Komposition and it is basically a textbook for painters. Printed in Berlin in 1927!
I am extremely happy I’ve rescued this book, reading it now and enjoying it’s vintage illustrations. Noticing some things haven’t changed that much in the last 100 years.
Have a look at some illustrations, aren’t they just marvelous?
Tamara
Ps: This weekend picking some books from my library to put on that bookshelf, hope to make someone happy π
A small pine tree trimmed as bonsai has captured my attention. There is all the beauty of a real grown up tree caught in a bonsai tree, put on a display to admire. And one can admire the nature of the tree species itself. Yet also the virtue of the one growing the bonsai. Painting this still life I’ve used vivid color palette.I wanted to catch the wonderful natural colors of a pine tree (Pinus sylvestris). And I’ve tried to make it really simple, just not to take any attention away from the simple meditative beauty of a small bonsai tree..
βThere are no borders in bonsai. The dove of peace flies to palace as to humble house, to young as to old, to rich and poor. So does the spirit of bonsai.β
β John Yoshio Naka
From my studio is my first painting freshly finished in 2020. And I am happy with it. Mostly so as here I’ve painted all what I hope to be with me well on into New year. Window with a view. Colors. Art. Painting. Literature. Nature. And a cup of coffee.
Window with a view at the painting happens to be the actual window in my art studio. I am happy and grateful I have a place to work. View from this window has appeared in several paintings of mine, especially so as it is really a part of my world perception. How many times have I, from the childhood on, looked trough this window. With my gaze resting on near by hills, forest, gardens, sky. Thinking about my work. So this is the window I’ve painted here, together with the view, the nature and the blue sky I love so much. Yet I take window as a symbol , too. What would an artist be without a view, view in a symbolic, broader sense? Without broad sight no art is possible.
Colors have been part of mine since I do remember. My early memories are panopticum of colors. I’ve grown up in an art studio and there have always been colors in physical sense around me. And there has been a lot of conversation about colors all the time. I find color even in nuances of black or white, but couldn’t live without all the colors a sunny day brings. Or a rainy day. Absolutely does not mater as long as there are colors. For my perception of the world is trough the chromatic values of the visible spectre.
Art. Art as the highest and purest form of communication. Painting being the art I live for. Represented with the palette on this still life. .
Literature makes me happy since I’ve learn to read and write. Among the books on the pile is I Ching I’ve got from my parents, for my 20th birthday. One of the books that have shaped me and my life.
Nature helps me survive. Creating art or even life itself can get exhausting but a walk in the forest instantly gives me energy. Or an hour spent in the garden. Or painting flowers. And as it gets so interwoven I’ve painted the colors on the palette to resemble the nature. Equally the color of the drapery on the table is meant to bring greenery of the nature inside the studio. And to ask us: where all these colors came from, where the view leads us, what is reality and what is the painting?
A lot of sentences for a modest art blog like mine. Time for a cup of coffee served in vintage porcelain over the pile of books in the studio. What the 2020 will bring ? A broad view on art from my studio would just do it!
Tamara
Coffee cup and books, painting detail from my new still life in making. Can’t wait to finish it!
Winter bouquet painting just finished! Oil painting on linen, small format but just gorgeous colors. Love using palette knife, allows me to paint fast and in bold colors π
Β© 2023 Β· tamarajare.com Theme by HB-Themes.