Gladiolas

Lauren and I have had a great gardening season -- well, maybe not as good as we had hoped, but still pretty good. 

This was the first summer that we had our own yard; sadly I choose the wrong spot for our main garden and our brussel sprouts and green beans failed to produce anything. We did get some radishes, but our best harvest has been our tomatoes. A couple of our plants look like they could snap at any moment due to the weight of so many tomatoes. 

My special project was a couple of cantaloupe plants. I wasn't sure if they would do anything, but we had great luck, we have been eating some of the sweetest and juiciest cantaloupe. We even had enough to share some with our neighbor.

We were also happy to see a bunch of beautiful gladiolas come out in our from yard. Our neighbor told us that she helped the last family who lived in our house plant them a couple of years ago. We had red, purple, orange, a few yellow and a bunch on white gladiolas. I was glad to paint some of them.

Oil on Canvas, 24" x 20"

It was a bit complicated to paint them. Because each flower on the stem opens and wilts at different times over the course of a few days, I had to rely on photographs of the gladiolas instead of painting directly from life, as I did with the glasses and the orange. I'm glad I worked this way - by the time I finished the painting, the purple gladiolas at the bottom of the stem were already dead and the little buds at the top had opened into beautiful flowers.


Thanks for looking, please contact me if you have any questions or if you are interested in this or any of my paintings.

---