Field of Tulips
80 X 108 Inches
Oil on Panel
Pansies: 4
36 X 36 Inches
Oil and Encaustic on Panel
Peony: Series 97
48 X 48 Inches
Oil and Encaustic on Panel
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Introduction
Last spring I went
to Holland, where I biked alongside fields and fields of flowers. The
fields were like a knitted scarf, with tulips planted in long stripes
of red, orange, yellow and pink. When the wind was right, I could
catch the sweet scent of row upon row of amaryllis. I slept on a canal
barge overnight and, the following day, biked to the Kuekenhof
gardens.
I was ecstatic at
seeing more tulips than I knew existed...tulips and fritillaria,
daffodils, and grape hyacinth...washes of cool and warm colours
painted with a broad brush. Busloads of people crowd into the acres
and acres of gardens, which are only open for one month each spring.
I'm connected to these strangers. We come simply to celebrate
flowers. It's like a thread that passes through us all.
In his book The
Metamorphosis of Flowers, Claude Nuridsany writes, “to gaze at flowers
is to plunge into the centre of the world, and through the
proliferation of forms that overwhelm us there, to discover how much
we belong to the world. If our eyes light up at the sight of shells,
blades of grass, or clouds, it is because the eye is made up of the
same fabric as they are, constructed out of the same constellation of
atoms; the eye is part and parcel of the same elaborate dance of
forms, and driven by the same forces of the universe. Put another
way, the eye is made to wonder, just as the flower is made to bloom.”
I brought home with
me some extra wonder. It's what I have tried to paint here.
Janice Mason
Steeves
October 2004,
Rockwood, Ontario
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