“Flower Garden at the Station” 8″x 10″ oil on canvas

Taking a little detour this week and posting a landscape painting of a garden of Gerbera Daisies.  Sometimes detours are useful and I think I’m preparing to a small degree to pick back up with my plein-air practice as the weather starts to warm up.

The painting I’m sharing was done from a photograph I took of this glorious bed of colorful daisies.  Gerbera Daisies are one of my favorite flowers they tend to have bold color and are very distinctive in their shape. 

Surprisingly enough the bed of flowers that I captured were at a local gas station.  They were truly amazing to my eye.  Tall stems and a dense almost hedge like planting ran around the perimeter of the station.  I went there in part just to see the flowers!  One day I saw one of the attendants tending to them – clipping the dead blooms etc..  It seemed like a personal project and not something crafted by a landscaping company.                      

This experience occurred two summers ago and the best I could do was to snap a few photographs.  I knew at some point I would make a painting of them and I may do a few more.  The flowers haven’t appeared since, I don’t if there are new owners but every time I go there I think of the rainbow of color I was able to enjoy at the time.

The painting is abstract and hints at the arrangement not so much in terms of shape but perhaps more in spirit and color.  There was so much nestled together to articulate so I took what I could to interpret the experience.