Happy May Day!

Peonies are one of my favorite spring flowers.  What are yours?

Amazing, isn’t it, how the peony rhizomes overwinter year after year to then bloom with  a spectacular show each spring?  Beginning anew,

“New Beginnings”.

This acrylic painting captures the cycle of sprouting to bloom.  A tight bud of green that gradually gives you a glimpse of hot pink encapsulating an ever growing globe.  Eventually the peony transforms into the glorious reveal of the fuchsia bloom. 

Each year with the coming of May I have the pleasure of watching this transformation from my studio door. I feast my eyes on these lush beauties reaching for the sky, and then enjoy the physical act of cutting just a few to bring inside, feeling the soft petals on my face as I inhale their intoxicating sweet scent.  

I hope you have a lovely weekend,

Stefanie

After the Rain © Stefanie Taranto, Oil pastel,  18.75" x 25.75" Framed

I took a road trip to Kentucky a while back. “After the Rain” is inspired by the weather's impact on the fields and sky as the miles rolled by:

The air was charged with the clarifying energy of a storm just having gone through. The voluptuous clouds over the expansive fields invited me to lay them in as if it were a down feather bed with the white reflecting all the changes on the earth below…Everything was just starting to spring.   The landscape was like visual candy with the abundant bright colors varying between pastel in the distance, to vibrant greens combined with rust-brown burgundy of the earth that had not yet sprouted, in the foreground.   A back and forth of heaven and earth depicting a moment in time.  Layer that with the sounds of nature.  Loneliness dispelled with activity as animals and humans alike emerge outside discovering the ever-changing show spring has to offer. 

Happy Memories!

Happy Spring!   Have you noticed the daffodils everywhere?  They are hard to miss. We are fortunate to have a few different varieties in our yard, the white ones above are my favorites.  

Working directly from fresh cut flowers and smelling their strong scent, I commenced drawing.   Oil pastel is a good way to capture the gesture of these beauties and soon the drawing developed into an impasto painting!

The challenge with any image that is white is to keep it fresh, while applying nuanced color to make the image interesting, but it still needs to read as a white flower.  I like working in oil pastel because white can be layered on with great depth, and if necessary scraped off and reapplied with ease.  It is a versatile and satisfying medium to work with.

On to painting the other varieties of daffs ….Bright yellow or white with yellow faces? These are such happy decisions to make while they still grace the yard.

My best to you,

Stef