Floral Watercolor Still Life Painting – and why we paint what we paint

This is a post from Belinda Del Pesco’s Art Blog Belinda Del Pesco.

Floral Watercolor Still Life Painting – and why we paint what we paint

Surfing the internet entices surreptitious visits to other artists’ studios. The subject of each artists’ work varies; we’ve all seen magnificently executed art featuring everything from a bucket of fish heads to an artfully arranged pile of tangled nude figures.

Why an artist choses to paint or draw a particular subject is their secret, but I’m assuming that what we find enticing to render in our studios has something to do with our personal histories.

We Inherit What We Love

This is my grandmother Margery (above) and one of her dogs (I think this was Gigi, or maybe Buttons, but it was before my time).

My maternal grandparents were from England and Canada, and they met as teenage immigrés working in a Connecticut textile factory. Margery loved flowers, so they saved enough to buy a little flower shop in town. That courageous leap from factory to flower shop launched a deeper love affair with plants, gardening and flowers.

Their affinity, in turn, swayed most of my family to take up gardening; some of them reluctantly, and late in life, but there’s dirt under nails and rose-thorn scratches on the arms of everyone I’m related to from this branch on my family tree.

Inherited Flower Loving

It may be very old fashioned to paint flowers, since it’s been done and done for centuries, but I *really* like flowers.

They remind me of Margery and Al, and their orchid shed, and their hundreds of varieties of day lilies, and their wildly profuse Schlumbergera. They are both gone now, but I think of them every time one of the plants they gave me sprouts a new shoot, or looks at me and shimmers in an enticingly paintable way.

• Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures. ~Henry Ward Beecher

Painting Your Personal History

Have you painted subjects fetched from your personal history, like Frida Kahlo, or Vincent Van Gogh or Andrew Wyeth?

It may be unexceptional to paint birds, or florals, but if that’s what lures you into the studio and compels you to pick up a brush or a pencil, it’s probably wise to go with those urges. Artists need to act on fleeting urges of inspiration, right?

If You Love Watercolor Still Life

Painting exclusively what you think your patrons will buy is fine, but purely marketed art can have a contrived feeling; sometimes, our intensions peek through the mark making. Every artist selling their work loves brisk sales. But some artists also need to express their own urges and personal affinities.

The adage “paint what you love” is a simple directive to combat waning inspiration. Any memorable saying from the well of art history’s centuries of wisdom is worth pondering as a credible observation.  But it may require a visit to your old family photo albums to review the likes and dislikes you unknowingly absorbed. Have you wondered where you got your preferences from?

Looking Backward to Go Forward

Looking backwards at our own personal histories helps guide our creative compass to understand what we paint, and why? Do you lean towards still life, or landscape, architecture, or figurative? Why do you find any of your favorite subjects so appealing?

Are your subjects steeped in nostalgia? Do you prefer political commentary, or word-art, or faces, or mariner scenes? What speaks to you? Pretend we’re having a cuppa tea and a platter of cookies while we ponder this and go around the table… Leave a comment and let us hear from you.

Thanks for stopping by, and I’ll see you in the next post -

Belinda

P.S. Australian artist and printmaker Sandra Pearce posted a beautiful drypoint printmaking project inspired by the theme “Pearl”. She harvested inspiration from her personal history through her late father’s fishing notebooks, which culminating in a gorgeous concertina book resembling a school of Pearl Perch. Have a look here.

Art Quote

We say, correctly, that every child has a right to food and shelter, to education, to medical treatment, and so on. We must understand that every child has a right to the experience of culture. We must fully understand that without stories and poems and pictures and music, children will starve.
~Philip Pullman

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