My Guilty Pleasure: Painting Flowers

"Grace" by Jim Carpenter, Watercolor, 15" x 11"

As my friend, artist Sandra Hadley, pointed out, “Sometimes it's refreshing to just celebrate beauty for its own sake.” And that observation by Sandra helps me to understand to some degree my love for painting florals. And, in my quest for living a joy-filled life, I have decided that it is time to indulge in some flora-abundance. 

For the next few days I’m going to publish some of my florals here on my blog. I am also making them available in my store on Zatista. I am bringing these paintings back into the light of day, in part because they stand for my own leap back into claiming my own voice (“I like to paint flowers!”) and in part because they lead the way for a new collection of floral paintings.

I painted “Grace” in 2008, long before I knew what a blog was and shortly before I discovered qigong and painting with acrylics, both of which turned me away from painting florals and turned me toward painting from an interior rolodex. “Grace,” as well as several of the others that will follow, is perhaps the beginning of my letting go of the need to paint from a reference.  Here I just painted from the heart – no photo reference – no flower or vase in front of me.  This painting has never been on exhibit, not because I didn’t want to show it, but because I was caught up in changing my image from “the guy who paints florals” to someone else entirely. 

Now, since this is my blog and this is my life, I think I can paint florals any time I want, and talk about it.