A couple of weeks ago, I was getting pretty tired of painting bleak winter landscapes, especially while standing out in the cold. I was so excited when we had a couple of unusually warm days at the beginning of March. I sat outside with my new gouache paints and painted some of the daffodils that had popped up in the woods. Then, of course, the next day it snowed.
Luckily I had just bought a bouquet of flowers with the intention of trying my hand at some more floral paintings. I set up the flowers in a vase in my studio and it felt like spring again. It was a more difficult composition than I am used to working with and the white flowers were tricky. I definitely learned a lot through this process! While I painted, I thought about one of my favorite poems by Mary Oliver, Freshen the Flowers, She Said. It reminds me that a simple act of being present and paying attention to something that seems small can add so much joy to life. Here is the resulting 12″ x 12″ oil on canvas, Fresh Flowers:
The Willow Tree
The next week, I got together with several plein air painter friends again at Graves Mill Farm in Madison, VA. Once again, it was rather cold, but we stuck it out. It was cloudy when I arrived in the morning and we sat inside the toasty farm house and chatted while waiting for the sun to come out. When the sun did come out, it was behind the blue mountains and shining down through several weeping willow trees that were just putting out leaves. The light was so lovely filtering through the trees with the contrast of the dark blue mountains in the background. I chose this to paint this tree because of the interesting shape of it’s trunk and the proximity to the road and fence. The wind kept blowing the strands of willow leaves. I was really trying to capture the light coming from behind the tree, the movement of the leaf strands, and the contrast of the dark mountain behind it. I ended up working on it a bit more in the studio to get it to where I wanted it. To see the progress shots from my painting session, check out my Instagram page: Instagram Here is the final painting, 14″ x 11″ oil on canvas, The Willow Tree:
I was only there for one day, but many of the other ladies who painted stayed for a night or two. It was so great to see photos of all of their work spread out over the farmhouse table the next day!
Patsy Cooner Art 