Yellow Peonies and Clematis Armandi
2019
100cm x 80cm / 39in x 32in
The roses were still not blooming, so I selected the herbaceous peonies along the garden path to my pavilion studio. Once again using the composite composition, I painted the peonies first, then moved my easel about 50 meters and painted a clematis cascading down over the peonies. I laid in the clematis using “negative space”, and it seems to encompass the yellow flowers that were so transparent that I had to paint them several times to capture the translucent light flowing through them. This rare peony has a strong crimson accent at the base of each petal which I hesitated to paint fearing too much contrast, but finally acquiesced to nature, invariably perfect. That color provided the final balance to the painting.
