bees & birds & botany

...a couple more paintings inching towards completion.

When Tony and I moved to Sonoma County five and a half years ago, we asked ourselves how the change (I had been living in a warehouse studio in an industrial neighborhood of Berkeley) might affect our painting.

We're much closer to nature--& our new place allowed plenty of space for me to indulge my urge to garden. As the garden grows, so ever more wildlife is enticed to visit, and is gradually showing up in paintings as well. Plant forms have long been there.

Some of the plants in these pieces-- mullein, honeysuckle, castor bean, and chickory, derive from a book entitled 'Common Weeds', though we grow most of them in the yard. I'm reminded of the quote: "A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered", attributed to Emerson.