Portrait With a Plant

Time of Peonies, oil on canvas, 2021
It’s been one of those mornings, when light is bright and garden is still calm, like enveloped in the mist of the night just passed and the blossoms of colorful flowers appear after the dark of the night to celebrate the day. Complete solitude is needed to enter the code of color world, walking down the garden feels like entering trough portals of eternal beauty. Picking flowers for a bouquet is a meditative task and as I’ve been picking the first peonies of the season I’ve remembered how happy I’ve been planting these pale pink peonies and how long have I waited before thy started to blossom. Their sweet scent of early summer each June gives me joy and makes me want to paint them in all their gorgeous beauty, so fragile and short lived, but year after year appearing in the corner of the garden, near a small Japanese maple.
Artwork price
As mentioned before, I had a wonderful privilege of not only having the most noble hearted, intelligent and warm person possible as my mother, but also having a possibility to grow up in an art studio, learning from one of the best artists of her generation, my mother. It was childhood filled with art. My first books were art monographs. Since the early age I was encouraged to explore the world of literature, painting, sculpture, music. I still remember artists, intellectuals visiting our home, having debates about art. Already as a young girl I saw almost all art exhibition openings in the town. And am grateful for that. But there is also something else I’ve seen. I’ve seen too many quasy friends of my mother taking her artworks home but forgetting to pay. Or wearing Gucci’s and claiming they need the already friendly price of the painting to be lowered. Or “borrowing “art just for an occasion and forgetting to bring it back. Or taking it for granted to get a portrait even before starting to write an article, art criticism or arrange an exhibit. But even so couldn’t imagine which happened today! Acclaimed art critic came today, almost ten years after my late mother’s death, to our home, to tell us he would like to have my mums artwork as supposedly she once said she might consider giving him a painting for an article, which of course has never been written. COMPLETELY IN SCHOCK all I can say now is, in name of my late mother, in my personal name, IN NAME OF ALL THE ARTISTS : TO MAKE AN ARTWORK ONE NEEDS TALENT, TIME, HARD WORK, PERSEVERATION, DETERMINATION, VISION, CREATIVITY, NOT TO MENTION ART STUDIO AND ART MATETIALS HAVE TO BE PAID. THEREFORE ONLY PRIMITIVE IGNORANTS CAN ASSUME IT IS NORMAL OR SELF UNDERSTANDABLE TO GET ARTWORKS FOR NOTHING!!! THANK YOU FOR UNDERSTANDING THIS SIMPLE FACT!!!!
Violets, Contemporary still life, Watercolor on paper
This canvas was made after a photo of mine, taken the same year. It was spring, I remember, as I visited Udine with my husband. I can still see the bright day it was as we crossed the market in the old town. Always attracted by beautifully arranged vegetables, fruits, I was taking some pics. As I saw these artichokes I got stuck by the gorgeous colors. How widely had someone put them on display on the bright electric blue vinyl cloth, just to accentuate the herbaceous greens and pinks of the first artichokes of the season!
White boquet contemporary still life Tamara Jare art
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……..
Variation in blue is a still life I’ve painted back in 2018. This small format oil on linen is still dear to my heart.
Painting a still life by me usually starts with a small walk around my garden. It is a sort of meditation, preparation for the painting process. Which flowers would I pick depends on the mood of the moment. And, obviously, it depends on the time of the year in the garden. Spring is always joyous, bringing first colors to the nature, then comes the summer with all the richness of the blossoming plants, fall again has it’s own colors, just as beautiful.
But at that time, when I wanted to pick at least something from the garden to paint, there was November. And not much around the garden to pick For at that late autumn time garden is usually still, frozen on time, waiting for first snow to come on it’s cold mornings.
So instead, I took some chrysanthemums from the bouquet in our living room. Just some white and blue blossoms for the small vase. And painted them immediately, capturing those blue and white hues, trying to catch light of that November morning before the snow fell to our garden…….
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