I Painted A Poppy Flower From Birth To Death In Watercolor

I started painting flowers 6 years ago using watercolor. My paintings don’t raise discussion on worldviews, woman’s rights or the climate… If they are about anything, it is in celebration of nature and nature’s beauty, which quite frankly just blows my mind!

By taking away the background and having a single flower suspended, drifting in white space, it really brings the color, shape and the play between light and shadows to the foreground without the distractions of what normally accompanies a growing plant.

This way everything quietens down and a single, dramatic focus is the result.

This series of paintings I did “A Brilliant Life” follows the Poppy flower from birth to death, a somewhat gloomy theme I know.

The potential of the bud, the perfect bloom, the loss of beauty and then the stillness of the final painting was so interesting to document. It seems rather like the human life cycle I guess now that I write that description.

It took me 18 months to complete the 6 paintings and about 2 months to paint each one.

I have included some “in process” pictures as so often people comment on them being “great photos” and don’t believe me when I tell them they are paintings.

More info: deniseramsay.com