After struggling (really, procrastinating) for over one year, I have finally finished a large oil painting, Mary’s Orchids.
Mary’s Orchids. Oil on linen, 2′ x 3′.
My sister Mary asked me to paint this work, requesting orchids, cherries, and a piece of pottery by Walter Anderson, the wonderful artist who lived on the Mississippi Gulf Coast near our home. She also asked for it to be sized at two feet by three feet. Gulp.
I bought the canvas panel, arranged the elements in dozens of compositions before settling on this one, roughed out a drawing on the plastic wrapper of the panel, and then STOPPED. I was intimidated by the difficulty of the composition and its sheer SIZE. I hadn’t attempted anything that large since the portrait I did of our dad for his 90th birthday three years ago.
I have at least four pots of yellow orchids hanging around the house. As each orchid lost its flowers, I’d buy another pot in the expectation that I’d be starting ‘soon’. This went on for so long, the original orchid re-bloomed! So I decided I better get cracking, especially after passing the one year mark.
Finally it is done, about to be varnished and shipped down to Mary in Houston, TX. Whew.
If you’ve got an extra minute to spend, check out the site of the Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs, MS. It’s a fabulous museum, built with my dad’s help, honoring a fabulous artist.
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Here’s the complete image — Walter, rowing his decorated skiff away from the Biloxi lighthouse and toward his Horn Island retreat. Followed by an alternate, more colorful, version I did last year as well.
