Flower Abstracts

Beauty was what this day brought. It was fulfilling, artistically satisfying and a wonderful experience. Days like today don't come around often and you have to make the most of them when they do.
Yesterday afternoon and evening were filled with unending rain accompanied by thunderstorms (we even lost our electricity for a while, of course, just when I was online!) so we feared for the Open Garden day.
And this morning it was still raining. I really felt so depressed on behalf of all 5 of the West Linton gardens that were due to be open this afternoon as part of the Open Scottish Garden scheme.

But lo and behold, by 2pm the sun was shining and it was warm. So we set off and that was when the day took on a golden hue. I have put together my most beautiful pictures which as it happens were all close-ups. I've begun to realize that macro photography is really my thing. I like to get in close enough so that every tiny detail can be seen and so that the actual shape is almost lost and what is left is like an abstract painting. Think Georgia O'Keefe, for instance, but also details in Klimt's paintings as well as Paul Klee.

The last garden we visited (John and Laura Irvine's one) was the most beautiful. In fact WOW was all that came to mind at first. It was of course the result of very hard work, which was done by someone with a great sense of colour and you could almost feel the joy it must give them each and every day. It seemed to be at the pinnacle of it's beauty although the owner told us the roses would be at their peak in about 10 days from now. Well, to me, the ones that were out already, made my day.

So no excuses for these rose portraits, of which the white one comes from our own garden (Iceberg) and the other two from John and Laura Irvine's garden.

This beauty was from John and Laura Irvine, in their front garden. Millefeuilles is what these roses are sometimes called and you can clearly see why. There were some buds to be seen too and you really wonder how something so muli-layered comes from such a small place. Nature is full of such mysteries.

But there weren't just roses to be admired. Here is a portrait of an Eryngium, or Sea Holly (as seen in John and Laura Irvine's garden). It is a real favourite of mine and this was a spectacular example, which has become my blip for today although I have to admit I was sorely tempted to make it another rose (the one at the very top to be precise, I literally gasped when I downloaded that one from the camera to the computer), but I have blipped many roses already and will do many more, so the sea holly was it for today.

This hydrangea is one of the two we bought yesterday, the other one is pink and will no doubt appear here too before too long!

And to finish off the show a detail of a geranium (officially now called a pelargonium, but I'm sticking with the old-fashioned name), to be found in John and Laura's greenhouse. The dark red veins in the pink leaves reminded me of how much I love that red-pink combination. Monochromatic it may be but absolutely stunning it also must definitely is.

So much beauty and for an artist this is a mixed blessings. On the one hand it makes you doubt that you can ever make anything that comes even close to this, but on the other hand, it gives you something to strive for, to try and live up to, and creating something that comes just a bit close to reaching these hights is a crowning achievement. I felt filled up somehow by what I saw today. Like the well I mentioned in previous posts, the well from which I draw for my own art.