Crocosmia Summer Blazes

8"x6" oil on linen mounted on archival panel

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Brilliant orange-red set afire by the sunlight

bouncing on long stems among long thin leafed foliage

the humming birds love this stuff.

They dance among the blossoms

drinking in the nectar of life

chattering their pleasure

and singing to me while I paint. 

Montbresia

12"x12" oil on gessoed masonite artboard

"Art is so wonderfully irrational, exuberantly pointless, but necessary all the same. Pointless and necessary, that's hard for a Puritan to understand." - Gunter Grass

This was such a wonderful day outside painting this from life. This is one of my favorite plants that blooms in the summer, that I had originally learned of in Ireland. Over there, it grows wild in hedgerows, just crazy lush each summer. It's the most wonderful shade of hot-red-warm orangey brilliance, and the foliage seems to vary from lime-green to blue-green depending upon how the sun light is hitting it. While I'm standing there painting, a couple hummingbirds are darting in and out among the blossoms- they LOVE this color of red. I think this is the plant that makes our hummers the happiest. Even with the wind blowing that sunny day and the flowers bobbing up and down, those little birds are tougher than any fighter pilots- they can maneuver in any direction while these flowers are bobbing in the wind. They are so tenacious!

I knew this summer I would get a painting of these from life and it would not be a 'botanical type rendering' but more of an impressionist viewpoint of the feeling I get from these incredible plants. Known as Montbresia or Crocosmia as well, I was happy to find that it would survive in southern New England, if in a protected area. This stand of them has tripled since we planted them. They are protected on one side by tall ornamental grasses and butterfly bushes.

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