Because I saw these wildly magenta wild roses at Doheny Beach State Park in Dana Point, California, and didn’t get to paint them the first time I was there, and even though the choice of these meant I was missing so many other blooms, including honeysuckle, the sunburst blooms of ice plants ,and the ocean itself, I took my palette and this tiny canvas board into the clump, found this little petal folded onto itself, and found a way to keep my feet away from the ants to paint it nearly life-sized on a canvas board only 1.5” x 2”. A magenta pink five-petaled single rose, with eyes of dark red, yellow fringed centers, above dense green almond-shaped leaves, the blooms are so fragile, so fine, so few per bush where I found them under trees with not quite enough light, barely looking like they would last a day in the sun, and hardly able to hold up their heads in the wind, how are these little feral warrior blooms not worth a portrait? Among my smallest works yet, is a painting any less a work of art because it is small? Like the blooms themselves, to fully appreciate them, you must come close. I’ve read these wild roses range from brightest magenta like these to pink and nearly white, When I find them, I’ll paint them too.
Because I saw these wildly magenta wild roses at Doheny Beach State Park in Dana Point, California, and didn’t get to paint them the first time I was there, and even though the choice of these meant I was missing so many other blooms, including honeysuckle, the sunburst blooms of ice plants ,and the ocean itself, I took my palette and this tiny canvas board into the clump, found this little petal folded onto itself, and found a way to keep my feet away from the ants to paint it nearly life-sized on a canvas board only 1.5” x 2”. A magenta pink five-petaled single rose, with eyes of dark red, yellow fringed centers, above dense green almond-shaped leaves, the blooms are so fragile, so fine, so few per bush where I found them under trees with not quite enough light, barely looking like they would last a day in the sun, and hardly able to hold up their heads in the wind, how are these little feral warrior blooms not worth a portrait? Among my smallest works yet, is a painting any less a work of art because it is small? Like the blooms themselves, to fully appreciate them, you must come close. I’ve read these wild roses range from brightest magenta like these to pink and nearly white, When I find them, I’ll paint them too.
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