South Africa has its high summer season in December, and the place to find bloggers and artists is mostly the kitchen as social life is at its peak and family members get together. Somewhere in the middle of hot-hot January, a guilty feeling about 'not painting' gears its head! Thus it is time to pick up where I left off!
I started the year with a soft oil painting of a typical West Coast winter rainfall flower, but mine is a "flower-gone-crazy"! Amaryllis Belladonna or March lilies are supposed to flower in February/ March. Mine chose November to appear and January to disappear. Underneath the ground those large bulbs are resting now until who-knows-when! They sure love the very dry summer and the harshest and driest part of the garden!
I picked some to put indoors and there the soft pink flowers darkened to a deeper shade. In my photo I caught some of the light shining through the fragile drying flowers, heart-breakingly lovely in their final moment! Read more about March lilies here as well as on Diana's blog Elephant's Eye.
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Did you not find the perfume overwhelming indoors? I love to walk my nose past the flowers in the garden.
ReplyDeleteThe perfume was sure lovely, Diana! And thank you for pointing out this rarity and naming my lilies!
DeleteMarie, how lovely. I am so jealous, we are having some frigid weather here on Long Island. Thank you for sharing the beauty that surrounds you and certainly have captured these beautiful flowers.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing.
Long Island? Say no more, Joan! You live in one the world's favorite places! But yes, you will love these wonderful warm days we are having!
DeleteThe full-scale flowers impart such a special beauty to this landscape Marie! Beautiful painting! I also have flowers going crazy - my Red Hot Pokers are now flowering in mid-summer!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Maree, I painted them like they appeared in the vase: up close and personal! I have those aloes, Kniphofia, is it? Do not have enough though! I noticed that all the other aloes are starting to flower. Don't you think they have more than one season?
DeleteBeautiful painting and a gorgeous setting for the blooming of these beauties. Something about the light coming through the dying petals is indeed beautiful and sad at the same time.
ReplyDeleteThank you Sherry! I love it when you always see the meaning of my work, like that photo of flowers way beyond throwing-out time! Beauty in unexpected places!
DeleteI love the softness of the pinks in your painting, Marie...and love the way you added the rocks and water in the distance! Beautifully done.!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Hilda! I must admit that pink looks very strange in my studio, yet this shows that we also have pink in nature on the West Coast!
DeleteHi Marie,
ReplyDeleteTrying to catch up here on my blogging since the holiday season! This piece turned out lovely. So soft and delicate too.
Giselle, thanks for the visit. I think you spoke a great truth there.....time, this crazy busy January...and yet one must make the time because blogging is a commitment and so is following!
DeleteSuch a beautiful, surprising splash of pink in that landscape, Marie, you've given them a wild and wavy feeling, as if they're greeting the sea - lovely!
ReplyDeleteHi Cathy, you are so right about "the surprising splash of pink"! I actually hide that painting, because it matches nothing else in my studio! thank you for your lovely words!
DeleteVery beautiful, thank you.
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