Hope, Love, and Expectations – Dreams of Spring, 30 x 24 inches

Hope, Love, and Expectations – Dreams of Spring

If you attended my solo show at the Workhouse Arts Center this past May, you would have seen this painting. It was the last completed painting for the show, and it was literally varnished the morning I hung the show.

I know, I was cutting it short.

This painting was a labor of love that begun in last year {2012} after the painting Tea, Prints, and Zinnias sold. I was inspired to paint another larger scale still life (24 x 30 inches) and see if I could incorporate all the flowers that were currently blooming in my garden. Something I was very proud of at the time because it was my first year of really having a verdant flower boarder.

So I set up this exuberant flower arrangement and got to work. I feverishly worked on this painting for 2-3 weeks, thankful that my then infant daughter, Naomi, had adjusted to her new babysitter, allowing me long stretches of time in the studio.

Then my flowers faded and died, so I put the painting aside. Letting it breathe some and to give me time to ponder the composition and think about any changes I may want to incorporate. As a practice, I paint from life in natural light, so I really try to finish a painting in the time span of my subjects. If I do not finish, I will typically wait until the following season when the flowers are back in bloom.

When spring 2013 rolled around, the foxglove, honeysuckle, and buttercups were blooming again, and I got back to work.

This April, when I was reworking the painting, I began to realize how this composition represents some of my ideas of motherhood and my daughter’s young life. It is full of the dreams that spring inspires in me – the love of life, nature, and beauty, the idea of new things to come, the expectations I have for my daughter, and the joy I feel on a daily basis about being given the opportunity to be a mother.

Essentially this painting is a pictorial representation of all these thoughts and feelings.

Hope, Love, and Expectations – Dreams of Spring

...................................................................... Available for Sale at the Principle Gallery Framed Painting: $3,000 {30″ x 24″ (76.2 x 61 cm) – oil on linen} {36″ x 30″ (91.4 x 76.2 cm) with frame}