Flower Paintings

Paintings of Flowers
See also Dorset Spring and Still Life

(Click on thumbnail image to see painting. If you wish to return to this page after seeing individual paintings, click on the painting)

What could be a happier way of passing a summer's day than to sit painting in a field of sunflowers and poppies in France or an English country garden, surrounded by flowers? Some of my happiest memories are of such times. Yet the beauty of flowers is that they are also wonderful indoors, so that they can cheer the dullest of days and their freedom of form contrasts well with the vases, jugs or bottles containing them.

The use of various combinations of gouache, dyes, inks and pastels lends itself particularly well to painting both woodland and flowers since they have a fluidity and spontaneity that reflects the nature of organic growth.

For semi-abstact paintings of flowers I love to work using collage as this provides a richness of texture, a freedom of expression and a particular glow that seems to convey the inner radiance of flowers, especially those looked at against the light.

When, by contrast, I want to concentrate on the bold abstract shapes that leaves and flowers so often create, I find that oil is a particularly suitable medium, although sometimes I use pastels in this way too.