Wildflower Harmony Print

Mother Nature is a great teacher; she never misses a chance to make you smell the flowers and then takes them away. There, she says, “now produce a rose.” ― Nanette L Avery As an artist, it is constantly amazing how Mother Nature consistently gives you patterns, designs and colours if you take the time to take notice. In this particular case, these wildflowers had sprung up on the side of the road near our neighbour’s house, and I noticed them as I went on my daily walk, as the colours were simple, understated and elegant. Eventually, I gathered a few samples and took them back to the studio for some investigation into the possibilities of an abstraction using the colours and tones from the original scenario. Now, the reason I think this kind of thing works is that the wildflowers spring up naturally, and the colours just sing without having to try too hard. If, for example, I was to try to take a metropolitan flower bed outside a building in a city as my inspiration, it probably wouldn’t work, as the types of flowers (and their colours) that grow there did not get there naturally, but were most likely selected by the council to try and get as much ‘nature’ and ‘colour’ as possible. This inevitably provides a garish and (to my eye anyway) unharmonious riot of colour which tends not to calm. It is, however, still a lot better than the old concrete and tarmac. The approach I took here was quite simple – let the muted oranges and greens talk to each other, and play them against the colour notes of purples, pinks and blues which provide them with some space to be in. In addition, I am trying to disregard form more, and let abstraction give some variety.