Midweek Harvest: Capturing Nature’s Beauty in Art

September 8, 2025 2 Comments by cmartzloff Flowers

Midweek Harvest 10″ x 8″ Oil on canvas – $300

Some paintings arrive almost as a continuation of one another. This piece—Midweek Harvest—feels like a natural companion to my earlier painting, Caught on Monday. Both were created in my kitchen, where the light feels brighter and more direct than in my studio. That light shaped the mood of the work, inviting me to see the flowers in a fresh way. While Monday’s bouquet leaned heavily toward pinks, this one carried a greater variety. It includes yellows, purples, and reds. These colors all circle around a palette that still holds together with balance and richness.

Simplifying the background has become part of my process in some paintings. In this one, I did not recreate the exact details of my kitchen—the oven, the table, the wood grain. Instead, I reduce them into essential shapes and colors. The warm orange tones of the table enhance the scene. The pared-down geometry behind the vase allows the flowers to hold the center. It’s less about literal representation and more about distilling the scene into something alive with color and rhythm. The zinnias, short-lived as they are, seem to ask for this kind of immediacy.

If this painting speaks to you, I invite you to explore more of my floral still-life’s. They are easily viewable by clicking > Latest Featured Work. Each piece is a way of holding moments of light.