Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Sakura - Japanese Flowering Cherry

"Sakura"
 not available

8"x 7" Oil on gessoed board.

Sakura is translated into "Japanese Flowering Cherry." This particular variety has blossoms that look like puff balls and are salt-pickled to make a tea used at weddings and festival events. I loved painting the pink flowers and saw the perfect companion item for this still life displayed right there in my living room.

My desire to keep the brushwork loose and the shapes and details simpler was realized in this piece. I really like the result and hope to be able to continue this approach. It has been a struggle of mine since the beginning of my return to painting three years ago to see shapes and not objects and has been a long time coming. The illustrator in me has refused to die easily and continues to surface time and time again. This time she was held at bay. Yeah!!!!

My computer's hard drive died a week and a half ago!!!! Yikes. I didn't have the software to cause automatic backups and nothing had been saved to my secondary hard drive since November 30, '09. When in the shop I learned that my files of the last 3 and half months were lost forever. I think I learned my lesson - the hard way. My computer was repaired, but at eight years old and the screen turning yellow I'm shopping for a "new" used Mac. This is not good at tax time, not even imagining what a tax REFUND is. You self employed people out there know what I mean!

Ebay link.

8 comments:

Camie Isabella Salaz said...

Beautiful

Anonymous said...

We actually got a tax return this year!! Partially because sales were down last year, and there is an extra bonus they are adding to the taxes this year. Hopefully you won't owe much, & maybe even get some back! We got $800, and we would normally owe that much, so it was quite a welcome shock.

I'm so sorry to hear that you lost your files!! I started backing up mine last year after much fretting. It's not a particularly easy way, but it's mostly free! At the start of the year I burn everything onto disks & send them to school with Justin so we have a set outside of the house (in case of fire/robbery/etc.) Then I stick a copy of any new files into a folder & burn those onto a disk every 2 months. Luckily I can also get a lot of images & files from my blog or emails if I did loose a month or two.

Dean H. said...

This came out beautifully, Marilyn! I know what you mean about the battle to paint shapes and not details.

Sorry about your computer woes.
Hmmm....Haven't backed up mine for awhile.

Dana Cooper said...

Marilyn, I too love this new direction your work is taking...beautiful!

Dar Presto said...

This is so beautiful.

Diane Hoeptner said...

Beautiful brushybrushwork and lovely composition. Nice!

Gary Keimig said...

A great blog with really beautiful art work.

Susan Roux said...

I love the peaceful emotion in this piece. The rendering of your flowers touched my soul...

Well done.