New Aquabord paintings inspired by nature's beauty

On a trip to Winona this summer, I came across an absolutely beautiful garden that begged to be painted and became the inspiration for several of my latest paintings. The flower planting was so massive it felt as though you were in the midst of an open prairie, surround-

ed by clusters of purple coneflowers in a sea of delicate yellow and white flowers.  This breathtaking sight was located outside the entrance to Winona's relatively new Maritime Museum which houses a wonderful collection of nautical paintings, as well as a room filled with Impressionistic works by Van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Pissarro and others. 

My goal while painting this scene was to capture the movement of the flowers as they swayed to and fro in the breeze, as well as the bright sunlight that bounced off the slender petals of the coneflowers. I also wanted to portray the vibrancy of the large flowers, while at the same time expressing the delicacy of myriads of small white and yellow blossoms.  I chose to use the clay-coated Aquabord instead of the more traditional watercolor paper because it seemed the perfect way to reach these goals - from experience I had learned that with this product it was possible to achieve both the brilliancy of color and the clean, crisp look l desired. The final result is shown in the painting above, A Flowering Garden.

Another painting inspired by the incredible beauty of nature comes from photos taken this fall on a late afternoon walk in the prairie of the Carleton Arboretum in Northfield. The winding path was lined with tall stems of Blazing Stars with their iridescent magenta flowerheads that sparkled in the sunlight.  Atop many of the flowers sat the beautiful monarch butterfly as it silently gathered its nectar. Once again I decided that in order to capture the brilliant colors of the monarch and the flowers I should use the Aquabord.  The challenge for me was how to portray the density of all the background plants without having this take away from the foreground flower and butterflies and thus becoming the focal point of the painting.  Using the fine-tip black marker to softly define these shapes was the solution I used.  See the end result above in the painting entitled Monarchs and Blazing Star.