Once upon a time, I was into orchids. I was thinking I would be this painter of portraits of all the odd and beautiful orchids. I even joined the orchid society to have more access. This was in the time before every grocery store sold phalenopsis and other more common varieties. This orchid is one of the only paphiopedilum that I ever owned, and I managed to keep it alive for a few years, but never got it to rebloom. I painted the original portrait about 10 years ago. In my quest to practice and to rework older paintings, I picked this one to rework awhile ago, but then decided to play with it some more. I actually took a photo of this plant (only one), which was not always the case back then when I was painting from life in my studio. It is very overexposed, so I think the flash must have gone off. I have tried to reach a happy medium between the colors of the original painting and the overexposed image I have.
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| 2013 |
A couple of things to note: I did a search for the name I had written down for this orchid, and I did not get anything to come up for it. HMMM. I corrected some of the drawing, but not much; I added the bud coming out and I softened up the background. I like the bluer background better. I added the two paintings that were on the wall at the time; the blue one is another orchid, and the one further back was of tulips in my garden. I like the way those two rectangles add to the other rectangles in the composition. Phaps are stiff, waxier orchids, but I still tried to soften that down a bit in the reworked piece.
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| Flight Into Egypt, oil on canvas, 18x14, 2002 |
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