Painterly Flowers

 

Gloriosa Daisy

Looking across the mid-summer meadow, across a sea of yellow daisies, any one of the flowers could be arresting.

I wondered what a painter would see, how he or she would go about rendering it. Bees have a much more specific interest. Our human attractions seem as variable and infinite as the flowers themselves.

Seeing the flowers within the meadow setting completely changed how I felt about taking their picture. I pondered relationships at play beyond the straightforward flower facts. Was this entirely visual?

Intriguing idiosyncrasies seemed to tell stories connected to pathos or rarity or desire, both the flower's and my own. Was this an element of aesthetics?

Are these yellow daisies more sumptuous for having displayed themselves above the carpet of little white ones? Sumptuous - am I giving away a preference for size and strength of hue?

In a pairing of flowers of equal size and drama the intense yellow might be less arresting than the plain white intricacy of the Queen Anne's Lace. Mind is sorting through these facts reported by the eyes, making up stories.

It seemed that from a painterly point of view these encounters could be more or less beautiful. The combination of perfectly lovely flowers in this photograph did not give me as exhilarating an effect as some others.

In this case, with a similar range of colors as the preceding photo, the shapes, textures, and harmonizing white borders make a more mellow ensemble. Is one more satisfying than the other? Better?

This design makes use of diverse petal shapes, complementary opposition on the color wheel, geometric intersections, and a recessive background to enhance the image.

Here the intensification of those design elements turns a natural occurrence into a vivid one for human sensibilities. Artistic presentation rests on discovery and framing rather than creation.

A painter, with the ability to re-arrange subject matter, could be more successful than a photographer with this scene. The repetition of the daisy shape, the harsh purity of the color contrast, and the dispersal of interest work against the rendering. Our satisfaction as viewers has shifted from joyful admiration to a slower judgment of intellect, where aesthetics separate us from other beings.

Curiously, this pairing of two near-primary colors is not as easy to like as the complementary pairs above.

Outside thoughts bear on aesthetic experience. The waning of the season and the pending demise of flowers may make us averse to‒‒or possibly more deeply appreciative of‒‒the simple compositional facts shown here.

Gathering these principles becomes the tools of story-telling in art.