a Winter Time Dream

Beautiful

Beautiful.

Nice work

I owe you a letter, Carol, and I'll write to you soon. I just haven't written much since March (I turned 70 and feel every bit of it, lol---I'm fine, but just a little pissed that 70 came in uninvited). I read your comments on my last comments, and appreciated them greatly as I always do...The only reason I haven't written more comments back---and the only reason---is that I didn't have the energy to write the ones I wanted to write, and which your art deserves. And I waited until I had that energy. Even one of my uploads, or normal comments, have been hard for me, of late. But it's been too long, so let me comment on at least one other image---past your magical fairy tale upload, this week---to keep 'active' in this remarkable, deep gallery of yours.

Your iris is almost like a series of gowns and scarves: Its petals are so undulant, they move in the air like fabric. Wonderful folds, shadows and furls. And the edges are like romaine lettuce, and the centers and meeting points (of various petals) are really intense confluences, with all kinds of intense blues and purples and tiny details. You have lots of primal line forms here---those concentrated areas of squiggly lines, some moving in one direction, others 'dotting' their areas, others bubbling up like boiling water. (The edge of the left-most petal, jutting towards the left frame of the image.) It's just flowing with folds and undulations; and the whole image is taken over by all this sensual activity...Where you use oranges and reds, etc, they really stand out, because we don't expect to see them in this otherwise sensual, blue-purple world.

The iris is surrounded by a mystical sky---it's a goddess after all, so she would be floating in space rather than moored to a stem. And you really have several things going on there. In the bottom, the sky is billowy with clouds and even nebula shapes (as in cosmic nebulae). The highlights are beautiful in this sea of violet-purple hues. The sky slowly gives way to open areas, above the halfway line (moving upwards), and your blues and purples are beautiful (and studded with stars). Atop, you have clouds, a gigantic moon---which is like a crown or ceiling over the iris's head---and the clouds are like thought as much as clouds. And you do something you've done many times: You gave an 'echo' of an iris in the background (top, right), giving a mystical 2d life to the flower-goddess, as she appears to be hovering in the sky like an apparition. God, you even have an iris---far right, middle---seen from the side, where you have some very complex, tricky angle-work going on, w/ the flower opening up like a trumpet with all kinds of droopy lines below it. It's such a difficult-looking part of the image, and it flows as naturally as can be. This goddes has such flow to it, it almost feels, in a few spots, like that old alcohol ink medium you used...

I still cant get over the concentration of all those folds and tunnelways in the irises. There's a goddess in there, but she appears to be hidden behind her sumptuous garments. And the sky behind her is sensuous and very supportive of her wild convoluted twists and turns and intense inner energies. This is an iris's dream of itself---what it dreams when it dreams of growing up to be something grand. A lot of stuff revealed here: very intense, in some ways very wild, and very sensual. You have the inner language of flowers down pat. A native speaker. That language finds full voice, top to bottom, in your hands. I wish you all the best in the world with your writing, and I'll be in touch soon...

Elegance.