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| May, 1997: oil on canvas; 24" x 36" |
Gee, what a pretty painting.Ê Oh my, is that a skull?Ê Is that a skeletal hand?Ê Those flowers do look at little odd, now.Ê What were you thinking of anyway?Ê Well, I was actually thinking of a nice, light painting with a vase and flowers.Ê But then, it seemed reasonable to place something beside the vase to provide compositional balance.Ê So I found my plastic artist's skull and added it. Ê Then, with the phrase, "narcotic purple flowers" reverberating in my head, I decided to add the skeletal hand, and to make the flowers look a little less wholesome.Ê I finised the painting after my mother died from breast cancer.Ê And that's when I finally realized what the painting was about.Ê And that's when I named it.
The still life is the backbone of every painting class, and I worked from the still life in class myself.Ê When I did this painting, I really was just trying to work a still life!Ê I can't help wanting to add my model skull.Ê I did consider painting it in a warmer tone, except that I like blue, and having done the underpainting in a blue tone, I decided to keep the whole thing blue.Ê I did the skull in warmer tones for balance.
One thing that I learned really well: poppyseed oil takes forever to dry.Ê It doesn't turn yellow, which is why people use it, but it just stays wet and sticky for months.Ê It needs to be mixed with normal linseed oil and/or turpenoid.
Last updated on Friday, December 21, 2001