ROSE Mothering Sunday

Rose Mothering Sunday, Pink Roses, Mother's day, is an original textured acrylic painting.

80 x 60 cm

Taken from a photo of one of the Mother’s day flowers received on Mother’s day, which was sent in a bunch which came from one of my Daughter from overseas.
The photo was blown up, drawn onto canvas, the texture added and painted into.
It has been created in a contemporary style, using tones of pink for the rose, on a brown background which has mark making effects.
The centre of the rose has gold acrylic highlighting which helps to add interest.
This is my story of how this painting came about. I received a beautiful bunch of flowers internationally from my Daughter, who is living in America, and who I became separated from during Covid with all the restrictions. So this bunch of flowers wasn’t just any bunch of flowers, it was a symbolization of our love as Mother and Daughter on this special occasion.
I wanted to bring to life with this painting something that others could possibly relate to. So I set to photographing the flowers from all different angles making sure to do this during the daylight hours while the flowers were still fresh and crisp looking.  Zooming in on some of the more beautiful ones, to be able to blow up and paint later.
Then later chose one of the roses from the bunch to paint which had the most beautiful intense smell, as the one for the painting. The roses in particular were exquisite, especially as they had opened up. I then set about producing a great sketch that could then be used as a recording to then start blowing up the image,  making sure to get my scaling right when transferring it from the drawing onto canvas.
Being a kind hearted and patient artist, I wanted to produce something of aesthetic value and high quality. It took ages to describe onto canvas using my painting skills with a pallet knife to show the petals of the rose, and moving the knife in such a direction to create a real 3D effect through texture onto the canvas. There was a point when sculpting the flower onto canvas that the texture started to run as it was on the easel. I was horrified that my hours of work could all go down the toilet in a minute!
I grabbed the canvas off the easel and thickened the texture paste, then began working into the canvas again from the floor. And as a 60yr old having to get down and work from the floor, it was definitely challenging. Realizing that I wasn’t as unfit as I thought ..and that I could still do this, as it had to be done that way, and I couldn’t get up until it was complete.
And the thought of having to get down there again, was just not going to happen!
Doing this painting I was up against other artists selling their work all over the internet. So I had to come up with something using the skills I had, but keeping up with modern times and techniques of how to go about the painting.
Once the sculpting had completed, I had to make sure that I placed the painting away from the doorway, as the thought of someone coming in and stepping on my new creation would just be too much. Going into my studio every hour checking to see whether or not the texturing had dried properly before  I could begin the exciting  bit, the painting into the flower with paints..
I then began painting into the flower, I was nervous at first as up until this point I had mainly been producing paintings with oils, and this one was one of my first ones switching over to acrylics to produce something modern.
I imitated the colours of the rose but emphasized  some of  them to create more interest and a striking effect.
There was a moment my heart started pulsating a little quicker when I thought I had painted in too dark what I was seeing in the flowers, but then stood back and realized that actually it was ok.
Using a method which was in between realistic and imaginary.
And finally a touch of gold paint placed into the centre of the rose, not only as a highlight, but also to add some sense of class to the artwork itself.
Once complete, I posted this painting up onto my Instagram and it got the most likes I had received so far on Instagram. When showing it to my friend she wanted a painting right away..
It was at that point I realized that I could create something beautiful that others liked and actually wanted to buy.
The sense of achievement was incredible, and made me feel extremely happy.