Spring means tulips to me, and with the unpredictable nature of the weather lately I have enjoyed my own private Spring while painting this. To me tulips are a flower of perfection, order, and control. Michael Pollan describes the tulip this way, in the book Tulipa: A Photographer's Botanical by Christopher Baker: "The tulip is all Apollonian clarity and order. It's a linear, left-brained sort of flower, in no way occult, explicit and logical in its formal rules and arrangements (six petals corresponding to six stamens) and conveying all its rationality the only way one could: through the eye. The clear, steely stems hold the flower up in the air for our admiration, positing its lucid, linear form over and above the dubious earth. The blossoms float serenely above the turmoil of nature; even when they expire, they do so with aplomb. Instead of turning to mush, like a spent rose, or a used Kleenex, like peony petals, they cleanly, dryly, and, often simultaneously, shatter." Tulips - oil on 12" x 12" artist's panel SOLD

Special thanks and acknowledgement to Ruthanne Annaloro for granting me her kind permission to use her fabulous photograph as reference for this piece. See her work at http://www.flickr.com/photos/53928360@N00/ where she goes by 1bluecanoe.

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