Fleurs Pour Mon Père

Here's the story:

I call this 12" x 16" oil "Fleurs Pour Mon Père," which is French for "Flowers For My Father." My dad died suddenly right before Christmas, and my life is finally calming down enough for me to spend time thinking and processing my feelings and grief, and one of the ways I'm doing this is through painting.

The canvas I painted on is a failed plein air painting from my last plein air session with my dad last May. At the end of a lovely two hours painting outside with him, the wind blew my canvas off the easel and it landed face down on my palette. We had a good laugh over that. C'est la vie!

The flowers in the red bucket that are the subject of this still life were a Christmas gift for my parents, ordered in October. They arrived the day my dad died. The next day, my mom said, "Dad would have loved these." But she didn't want to have to take care of them, so she asked me to take them home.

As I painted this, it got darker and darker. And I didn't realize the meaning I'd been building until I darkened that background the final time and applied the final bright touches to the two focal area tulips. I chose dark to represent death, a veil over the life that once was. The dying tulip at the top aimed at the lower right tulip reaching toward the light are my dad and me - he poured as much of his artistic knowledge into me as he could over these past few years as we developed a much better and closer relationship by bonding over art. He's gone now, but I'm still here using his advice and wisdom as best I can.

This is probably the most meaningful painting I've ever created in a mostly unintentional way. I was painting my feelings and at the end, I realized what it all meant. It made me cry, honestly, and it felt good as well. Healing. Like a final goodbye.

I started teaching myself to paint with oils at the end of 2019.