Flowers and Gram

20 x 16, oil on canvas board

 Flowers and lemons again. This time I tried to keep the shapes big and the details few until the very end and then I only added what I thought was needed. 

I love flowers and often think of my grandmother when I buy, arrange, and paint flowers. My grandmother had a knack for growing them, something that she inherited from her mother who was famous for her rose beds and flower gardens back in the little Missouri town she lived. My grandmother could make a flower grow in any kind of soil, and she did. Even at the very end of her life, she had pots of African violets in her room, and she would still stick her fingers into the soil to see if they needed water.

I was a tough study about flowers when I was little. My problem was that I thought dandelions were beautiful. They were yellow and so pretty, or they were "blow wishes flowers" and if I saw one, I had to blow. I recently found this old photo of me with Gram. I can just imagine Gram patiently explaining to me again about dandelions and how weeds were not flowers. But, you know what? Every so often, she would blow wishes with me. I miss her!

Gram and Katherine, age 3

Turles, Gram, and more fruit!

Still no cranes at the refuge. But today, in the last bits of sunshine before the weekend storm arrives, the turtles are up on the logs sunning themselves. I don't know why they do it, but they strain their necks up and it always reminds me of my grandmother. Gram used to pull her chin up and kind of clench her teeth and ask, "Do you think my neck is wrinkled?" Even though it really did look wrinkled, I answered, "No, not at all." I might have been young, but I wasn't stupid!

A trip to the market for some new painting material. Ah, more fruit! On the right is my palette. I probably need something bigger for mixing my colors, but I'm not sure what to use and how to know what I need. What do you use for your palette and how big is it?

I'm calling it good enough. Now that I'm done painting it, I can eat that beautiful Honeycrisp apple I've been looking at all day!