lovely

Outstanding work. God bless.

Excellent!!

Beautifully painted hyacinth buds Carol and a lovely verse to go with them. Very natural colors too.

Lovely flowers & the scent is wonderful.

Excellent

carol, I'm back for but a few days, but I will try to comment on a few of your remarkable and always pulsing, immensely committed and exquisitely articulated images. This one, when zoomed, shows up unusually small; but that's ok: It has an intensity that way; and I can 'extrapolate' to larger sizes in my imagination.

Your strokes are so rich---well, it's your strokes combined with your color combinations---that these petals feel like tufts of silk or other fabric. Each group of petals feel like they're tufts of wool, in fact; and by "color combinations," I mean something similar to what the late 19th C masters did (Monet, Van Gogh, even Cezanne in his ornery, persnickety way): combining lighter with darker hues, one next to the other; in some of your works you combine contrasting (complementary) hues, one next to the other; here, you also use greens against purples---nearly complementary---or dashes of reds and other contrasting hues. And all these combinations are given to us in 'stripes', going up and down your petals; where they create a sense of a 'symphony' in each petal, a big splash of vitality---in a way that 'straight' greens or purples could not.

And then...there are the stokes themselves: Bear with me, because this could apply to a number of your works.

Your strokes, here, are these undulating affairs: They river their way up and down your petals like tributaries and even whole rivers: rivering to a destination, yet flowing back and forth to get there. Van Gogh's strokes could be much straighter (though he made up for it with the incredible electricity of his brush): But you get that same energy with very 'carol' wavy-lines, these lines filled with life where each line exhibits the desire to move to and fro because it has a life of its own. Yet you still keep to the overall shape of each petal, so that life is contained inside the petal; there's wonderful life in each one. To me, these are cells of activity, which then combine into tufts of activity (a bunch, a bouquet). That ability---to impart so much life to a petal, stem, blade of grass, etc---is one of the things that typify your work, Carol. These petal-bunches are alive.

I also love the mix of purple tufts with green tufts here---some bouquets are one set of hues, some other are another. I know this is true in real life: But you bring out the hues to where they sing arias, and shake the surrounding area. (Another 'carol' feature.) And then, your watercolor-like washes in your sky (uppermost, center): You know what that background reminds me of? Hold on now----don't cringe, as this just came to me: They remind me of, yes, the plunging sky that split the Red Sea in that crazy madcap kitsch-o over the top extravaganza, Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments. Don't leave the room, you're much more cosmic than DeMille: But if you saw that as a kid, and you remember the special effects: They were painterly and gorgeous. (Even great directors acknowledge that: Scorsese said his special effects were as beautiful as many of today's digital effects.) Well, I think of DeMille's sky funneling into the sea, when I see your sky. You'll have to give me some slack here. I just think of it. Now I'll move to my bigger point...

My point is: This sky---like a number of your skies---is typical of your beautiful handling of washes, how colors bleed into colors, and how blues and purples (etc) have so many shades; and I love the layering. It's a beautiful 'topping' to this sumptuous piece. In the end, you've created another flower painting that feels like nature at its most electric; and which also has a great softness as well. Hyacinths never had it so good, Carol; and your lights and darks here are so sculpted---you just never fail to create visions like this. This is another luscious, beautiful image from you. When your hyacinths bloom in your garden (what---in July? assuming the snow melts by then), they'll be proud when they see how you've portrayed them.

Mark, all I can say is 'WOW'! Your comments take me and my art to another world. A world I like being in very much. And you had me blushing with the Red Sea comparison, not to mention Van Gogh and Monet. I do think backgrounds are as important as the main subject of an artwork, and often spend just as much time on them. I had fun with these hyacinths because they are big robust buds and I've always enjoyed the textures and shapes and possibilities of buds ready to bloom. And yes, I also love looking at big multi-color balls of yarn. I did lose myself in the colors of these buds because purples and greens together are some of my favorite combinations. Something so alive and almost spiritual in those colors for me, and they do fill me with energy. Thanks so much for your amazing comment. My art, and spirit, have never had it so good. :o)