Even if you don't have fresh flowers in all your rooms, original flower art can lighten and brighten your space, this small one with a minimal footprint on a dresser, bookshelf or even on your kitchen counter with so much power to evoke a smile. These little roadside poppies were painted on a warm spring day in a parking lot, in the shade of the big white bus conversion, next to Piestwa Peak in the Phoenix Mountain Preserve, a geologic park in the city with panoramic views of it.
Piestewa Peak, at 2608 feet, the second highest in Phoenix to the famous Camelback Mountain, was originally called "Vianom Do'ag" by the Tohono O'odham tribe, which meant "Iron Mountain." By the 1900s, white settlers called the mountain "Squaw Peak," a derogatory term for Native women. It wasn't until 2003 when the Arizona government officially changed the name to Piestewa Peak in honor of Lori Ann Piestewa, an Arizona woman who was killed in action in Iraq that same year. Piestewa was the first Native American woman to die in combat in the U.S. military.
As a way to pay homage to Piestewa, local taiko drummer and Japanese folk artist Ken Koshio hiked the peak at sunrise every morning to play his taiko drum and flute between 2020-2023. I'm disappointed to have not seen and heard him but I'm adding with this painting in homage of my own to the land, our magnificent Sonoran Desert and her mountains, these wonderful people, and the gloriously vibrant wildflowers that push their way toward our unrelenting sun, delighting passersby and all those photographers too. This original comes, if you wish, in the brown ceramic leather-laced frame shown in the photo, it is 2" wide, so the finished piece is a diminutive 5" x 5". Kallstroemia grandiflora, the Arizona poppy, is a summer annual herb of the deserts of the Southwestern United States, California, and northern Mexico, and when we have a wet winter, these shiny yellow-orange blooms pop up and smile generously.
Even if you don't have fresh flowers in all your rooms, original flower art can lighten and brighten your space, this small one with a minimal footprint on a dresser, bookshelf or even on your kitchen counter with so much power to evoke a smile. These little roadside poppies were painted on a warm spring day in a parking lot, in the shade of the big white bus conversion, next to Piestwa Peak in the Phoenix Mountain Preserve, a geologic park in the city with panoramic views of it.
Piestewa Peak, at 2608 feet, the second highest in Phoenix to the famous Camelback Mountain, was originally called "Vianom Do'ag" by the Tohono O'odham tribe, which meant "Iron Mountain." By the 1900s, white settlers called the mountain "Squaw Peak," a derogatory term for Native women. It wasn't until 2003 when the Arizona government officially changed the name to Piestewa Peak in honor of Lori Ann Piestewa, an Arizona woman who was killed in action in Iraq that same year. Piestewa was the first Native American woman to die in combat in the U.S. military.
As a way to pay homage to Piestewa, local taiko drummer and Japanese folk artist Ken Koshio hiked the peak at sunrise every morning to play his taiko drum and flute between 2020-2023. I'm disappointed to have not seen and heard him but I'm adding with this painting in homage of my own to the land, our magnificent Sonoran Desert and her mountains, these wonderful people, and the gloriously vibrant wildflowers that push their way toward our unrelenting sun, delighting passersby and all those photographers too. This original comes, if you wish, in the brown ceramic leather-laced frame shown in the photo, it is 2" wide, so the finished piece is a diminutive 5" x 5". Kallstroemia grandiflora, the Arizona poppy, is a summer annual herb of the deserts of the Southwestern United States, California, and northern Mexico, and when we have a wet winter, these shiny yellow-orange blooms pop up and smile generously.
#170 - Acrylic on Canvas
Painting: 3”x 3”
In Frame: 4.5” x 4.5”
