Floral Tradition

Floral Tradition      6" x 6"      Pastel       ©Sheila Ashley Liston
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DAY 20 of Thirty Paintings in Thirty Days Challenge, September 2017

The floral department in my grocery store welcomes me as I enter the store to do routine shopping. Although there's nothing routine about the color that beckons me to linger a while, breathing in the fragrance of fresh flowers.

While I painted today, I realized just how much colorful flowers mean to me. It goes back to seeing my grandmother cutting flowers in the garden,, and carrying them in her apron to the house where she tenderly put them in water. My mother loved flowers and did the same. You can imagine their delight, when my first job was as a floral designer in the neighborhood flower shop. My daughter, Michelle, worked as a floral designer through her college years in that same shop! 

That training and emotion has become a part of my story as an artist today.  Designing flower arrangements afforded me the opportunity to learn color, shape, and depth in a 3-D form. In painting now, I have learned to apply different techniques giving the optical illusion of depth, and yet the basic color principles are the same.