Floating Heliconia #6

Floating Heliconia 18" x 24" 

Floating Heliconia continues my tradition of painting bizarre plants inspired from my yard and neighborhood. Part of my thing is I am not a realist--in any sense of the word! In this case, meaning I can only paint things that look like their counterpart in the physical realm with a lot of grunt and effort. Painting then becomes un-fun very quickly. So, I paint my weird interpretations of what I see 'out there' filtered through the lens of my inner eye.
I had a lot of fun painting the marks on this canvas. I was attached and didn't want to cover them up. I had outlined many large heliconia leaves so I had a good excuse to show-off all my cool marks. The overall feel was crowded and out of balance. I slowly, with sighs and resignation covered them up. I did give myself all the little circle shapes as a consolation prize and was able to make some of them part of the heliconia flower and others, floating seedpods. You may have noticed in my paintings (or you will in the future) circles and spirals are some of my favorite shapes to doodle.
Although there is a lot of pale turquoise in the background, I attempted to break it up with texture and some pink paint. I like this painting, I think it is interesting to look at and think about. When I finished it a few years ago I was not so sure how I felt about it. When my neighbor, Judith saw it and said she liked it, I gave it to her. Now it hangs in her house and when I visit I always enjoy saying hello.

On a different note, it has always bugged me that when I did my blog on my second painting Palmz that I didn't have the photo of the early morning sunrise through the palm trees that inspired me. This morning on my way home from checking the surf, (which was wild and pretty junk so I didn't go out) I saw this in my rearview mirror and stopped and took this photo. Feels good to finally have the picture posted.