Plants

Encaustic artwork that features embedded plants. Here is a list of the posts in alphabetical order, followed by all of them in order of post date.

• AcaciaJuly 4, 2020
• Among the SeaweedJune 16, 2023
• Ashes of RosesFebruary 10, 2023
• Black IrishMay 2, 2021
• CallunaDecember 4, 2021
• Christmas, 2021December 29, 2021
• Desert Weeping WillowJuly 8, 2020
• Get LuckyApril 28, 2021
• Heart of IronJuly 8, 2020
• HibiscusJuly 6, 2020
• LantanaApril 4, 2021
• May DayMay 2, 2022
• Memories of SpringNovember 2, 2022
• Mexican Bird of ParadiseSeptember 22, 2020
• Mexican PetuniaNovember 21, 2020
• Mum on a PigNovember 27, 2021
• Mum over CatJanuary 31, 2022
• Mum over HibiscusFebruary 14, 2022
• Mum over LavaJanuary 24, 2022
• Mum over SunsetJanuary 10, 2022
• Mum with Rose PetalsNovember 20, 2021
• Mum, BurntJanuary 17, 2022
• Nanny’s LilyApril 24, 2023
• Orange BlossomNovember 13, 2021
• PoinsettiaDecember 12, 2020
• Poinsettia over PoinsettiaDecember 18, 2021
• Pressed HibiscusMay 9, 2021
• Pressed UpdateOctober 30, 2021
• Pressed Yellow BellMarch 28, 2021
• Purple Desert SageJanuary 30, 2021
• Shamrock HydrangeaMarch 17, 2021
• WiP: Ashes of RosesNovember 9, 2022
• Yellow BellJuly 15, 2020
• Yellow Bell, DancingJanuary 5, 2022
• Yesterday’s BloomsNovember 18, 2022
• Zuzu’s PetalsMay 17, 2024

• Zuzu’s Petals

  

• Among the Seaweed

  

  The title came last.

  This is a repurposed piece that had, once again, faded. Just spitballing, I added dried flowers and leaves to it, but nothing was working. It made me think of undersea life, though, and I went from there. It’s not my greatest fish piece (out of 2 so far, lol), but it was an important step and inspiration.

• Nanny’s Lily

  

  Another original that faded. Nanny’s garden in Maine always had beautiful orange daylilies. This is just a store-bought Easter lily, but somehow it makes sense to repair Nanny’s portrait with it.

• Ashes of Roses

  

  You may remember this from a YouTube I posted.

• Yesterday’s Blooms

  

  When I recently returned to the studio I had a packet of drying flowers leftover from the spring. Most of them — brace yourself — were a moldy, rotting sludge. I had pressed them between paper with no air flow. (Lesson learned.) The flowers on this piece were the ones that hadn’t decayed.

  The substrate on this happens to be another of my repurposed pieces. Its former self, Sadko, was based on a painting I desperately wanted to honor. I missed the brief, though, and it had to go.

• WiP: Ashes of Roses

  https://youtu.be/smFERkgJOFE

• Memories of Spring

  

  Half-completed before my summer hiatus, this rose piece still carries the color and intent of the earlier season. It lasted well!

  And now comes my joke that I, too, am well-preserved. Today’s my 59th birthday. May your flower petals look ever fresh. Cheers!

• May Day

  

• Mum over Hibiscus

  

  Another entry in the Mum series, lol! This is, naturally, a repurpose of this. The original piece, like all of my earlier organic art, dried to dust and faded away. I fear that the photo, with all the rich color, is not what the art looks like on the wall. My small pieces like this show much darker and disappear on display. I’ve found that a great way to appreciate these little morsels is to use the photo as phone or computer wallpaper. The detail is magnified. With my permission, please try it! I’ll let you know when I become famous enough to rescind the offer and charge for the screen grab. Hahaha!

• Mum over Cat

  

  Another repurposed piece, of course, lol. This one I liked enough to post. The texture and the color were successful to me, but the image didn’t have the clarity I wanted. The “Mum Over” pieces have become an inadvertent series!

• Mum over Lava

  

  Another repurposed piece, this was a screenshot from The Elder Scrolls Online of a volcano overflow near Ebonheart. (The lava still remains as the orange underneath.) It’s another encaustic I never posted because it was nothing special, and then the non-archival print faded with time.

• Mum, Burnt

  

• Mum over Sunset

  

  This was a completed piece, a screenshot of an Auridon sunset from The Elder Scrolls Online game. It was so unremarkable I never posted it here. Over time, the color faded. (I don’t use archival papers. Maybe I should reconsider!) Now it’s another repurposed piece. Pink from the sunset, barely fading through at certain points, is all that remains of the original.

• Yellow Bell, Dancing

  

• Christmas, 2021

  

• Poinsettia over Poinsettia

  

  Remember last year’s poinsettia piece? It was a redo of a previous, failed encaustic. Well, it’s been redone again. The original poinsettia faded to white and turned brittle. Remnants of the old plant can be seen underneath the new leaves here.

  I liked that former piece, but I’m learning the behavior of organic material in wax. Moisture doesn’t age well.

  I won’t list all the possible metaphors this piece suggests, lol.

• Calluna

  

• Mum on a Pig

  

  This is another repurposed piece, with the mum added to a finished encaustic. Hilariously, I never published the pig (below), although I thought I had. (I’m busy looking through the archives this morning so I can link to a post that doesn’t exist . . . lol.)

  Well, he’s a good boi, but I didn’t do him justice, and now he’s under a flower.

  

• Mum with Rose Petals

  

• Orange Blossom

  

  This is a piece I started last spring before my summer hiatus. When I came back to it a few weeks ago, the leaves had gone white and were brittle and dry. I just broke the pieces off, really, and left the leaf bits that were still stuck. 

  The flowers themselves you can hardly see. They weren’t very big to begin with, but there they are. I haven’t really done anything new to them.

  However, these are fresh orange leaves. I didn’t iron or press them or anything. They just sat on the table for a day so they weren’t quite as . . .  juicy. I waxed them down and pressed every bit of air out of them, even cracking them or ripping them so they’d lay flat. We know that these leaves will go white over time.

  I’ve doctored them, though. They have some green oil paint on the wax, and a lot of india ink, which is my new favorite thing. So, we’ll check back in a few months and see how it’s aged.

• Pressed Update

  

  The hot weather here is over, and it’s time to revisit the encaustic studio.

  First of all, let’s check in on these two pieces that used ironed flowers. Remember them? The hibiscus is almost six months old, and the yellow bell is seven months. This is how they look today.

  Not bad!

  Both have retained their color better than a non-ironed piece. After six months, any other organic encaustic I’ve made has faded to white. The leaves in the bottom right of the hibiscus show this. I didn’t press them, only picked and added them at the end. All the green from them is gone.

  I feel vindicated and on the right track with this process! After months away from the studio, the start up is hard, but let’s get in there.

  One other note to the experiment: Flowers with deep color seem to fare better than pale flowers. Winter in the desert is our blooming season. I hope to post many more pieces as I ramp up. Stay tuned.

• Pressed Hibiscus

  

• Black Irish

  

  This is another cutting from the shamrock hydrangea I posted for St. Patrick’s Day. I had a background I wanted to repurpose — of a Marian portrait that wasn’t successful — and the extra flowers.

  Here’s one lesson I’m gleaning from using plant material: No matter what you do with pressing and ironing, the flower will fade. Perhaps just using encaustic paint to mimic the original color is the best way to go. In this case, make it green!

  Also, a store-bought cutting may already be deficient. The more successful pieces use plants cut fresh in my own yard.

  For some reason I’m determined to succeed at this! Lol. Thanks for coming along on the journey.

• Get Lucky

  

  New song available for Ardent at bandcamp. From Elizabeth’s perspective, Charlotte is foolish for accepting Mr. Collins’ proposal. For Charlotte, though, it’s a lucky opportunity.

  Oops! I originally called this song “The Scheme” because that’s how Charlotte thinks of her encouragement of Mr. Collins. The song itself suggested another title, though, and “Get Lucky” is the official and proper name.

• Lantana

  

  I thought the colors were appropriate for Easter. Here’s the funny part, though. This is a repurposed background. I was never satisfied with the original (as is often the case, lol), and I thought that a former Halloween piece becoming an Easter piece was profound, in some strange way.

• Pressed Yellow Bell

  

  Officially posting the piece I youtubed on Feb. 10, 2021. Remember, I want to know if pressing a flower, including ironing it, causes the color to sustain better. Stay tuned.

  SOLD

• Shamrock Hydrangea

  

  Happy St. Patrick’s Day! This is a store-bought cut flower that I quickly pressed for the holiday. The iron scorched the petals (oops), so I cheated the green a little with paint.

  This is another example of a repurposed background. I felt the original piece didn’t quite hit the mark I wanted, and so it gets a second life.

• Purple Desert Sage

  

• Poinsettia

  

• Mexican Petunia

  

• Mexican Bird of Paradise

  

• Yellow Bell

  

• Desert Weeping Willow

  

• Heart of Iron

  

• Hibiscus

  

• Acacia