Sunday, June 6, 2010

Blue Hydrangea - Lin Frye

9" x 12"
Arches 140#CP
Painted at Granville Arts Festival

This week, my oral history project took me to the home of a most fascinating woman. Her garden is called a 'recycled garden' -- bringing to mind bits of this, that and the other thing. But not at all! Her garden would be more aptly named 'a history garden' .... since every bit of her family's old farm implements, windows, chimney pieces, the town's old bricks, millstones, fireplace pieces, old benches and the like have all been 'recycled' into the most cozy, clever and incredibly beautiful garden. The interviewee loves hydrangeas, and when we visited her garden, they were in full bloom and in many varieties. What a glorious site.

My own hydrangea is in full bloom now and between the visit last week and my own garden, I had to paint these beautiful shrubs. I 'sponged' in the hydrangea blossoms before I left for the festival, and worked from memory on the leaves and bits of detail during the show. When the heat and humidity are over 90F, that paint sure doesn't work like it does in the studio! LOL But it was fun and I was glad to have something to work on in between visitors and visits to other booths.

Please see: http://viewfromtheoak.blogspot.com for festival info.

Lin Frye
North Carolina

4 comments:

  1. What a beautiful image, Miss Lin, and I love the story! I'd love to see that garden...

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is beautiful! I recognized them right away from the little thumbnail I saw from my blogspot 'dashboard'. I was just at my Mother's yesterday and I picked a few of her hydrangeas. They are such a pretty flower. Neat idea to use the sponge to get their texture!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Good forethought to start your picture that way; and excellent practice for your memory and observational skill, to work the rest without further reference.

    ReplyDelete
  4. You are an inspiration with your watercolor sketches. I'm a frequent visitor to your site.

    ReplyDelete

We'd love to hear from you, your questions, comments, observations! Please feel free to comment, feedback is important to us.