Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Cave Me a Flower

Flowers. What can be more obvious then painting flowers? I honestly can't say, but I never painted it until recently, when winter became grayer, and our apartment got this familiar wintry cave atmosphere (and smell...). It works great as a reason to buy them once a week. I admit - I am addicted to this image of flowers being in my house. And like any addiction you have to feed it with a good reason, and now I have one - ART.
Sitting with different kind of high quality recycled paper cards and my aquarelle pencils and acrylic colors I experience what you usually only read about - quality time.

Flowers In Green Vase - Hand Painted Card
Acrylic paints on paper made of hemp
and post consumer wast fiber

I love them fresh and wild, in kind of a messy order. Maybe part of it is because about 10 years ago, I took a course with an expert of Ikebana ( the Japanese art of flowers arrangement) . It was fascinating but I am an Ikebana natural about as much as I can rock as an accountant. Calculating angels as a tool to put flowers on a table was much more strike for me as a point of view (and this is exactly where you need to use real physical point of view!). When I later looked at these arrangements (that I took from class) on my living room table it made my feel a bit stressed and also sad. The poor flowers seemed like soldiers in a vase of duty. As an Israeli it reminded me of my duty service in the army - definitely not one of my the favorite memories.

Flowers In Purple Vase - Hand Painted Card
Acrylic paints on recycled cardstock paper

So here I am addicted to Trader Joe's inexpensive and colorful mixed flower bouquets. For sure, they are made out of the imperfect branches but I don't care - as long they are colorful and survive on my cave's table for almost a week - I'm pleased.
Pleased and now addicted also to painting them.

Flowers In Orange Vase - Hand Painted Card
Aquarelle pencils and acrylic paints on paper made of
hemp and post consumer wast fiber

This is such an enjoyable addiction - I completely understand how flowers became such a classic image - not just for the viewer but also for the artist.
By the way, are there cave paintings that including flowers?

3 comments:

Babamoon said...

very pretty flowers :)

Tamar Hammer said...

Thank you so much Naomi!

Tamar Hammer said...

Thank you so much Miss Val's!