An Artist in the Garden

Julia Watson
Aug 22
2 min read

I’m an artist, and my garden has been the inspiration for hundreds of my paintings. Some of them were artistic failures, even when the reference plants were magnificent. But there are quite a few that I’m proud of, and I’ll include some of them here.

I’m not a photo-realistic painter – sometimes I’m closer to impressionism or abstraction. My flower paintings aren’t perfect replicas of flowers, and to be honest, I don’t care about replicating flowers. What I want is the gestalt of that flower.

I often have the flower subject in front of me to look at while I paint (artists call this “painting from life”). But sometimes I work only from memory and imagination. I have a good visual memory, and I’ve amassed a mental library of reference images from all my years of working with flowers. As I paint, I’m only trying to make something beautiful that brings back memories of flowers.

In my less realistic paintings, the effect might be similar to dreams. Sometimes in a dream you see people you know but they don’t look the same as in real life. And yet, you know who it is. You might meet your best friend and know who it is, even though they look entirely different. Sometimes my flower paintings are that way - I know which flower it is even if it isn’t quite realistic. I hope that someone else will see something in that painting - something that triggers their own memories. The feeling of flowers and gardens – the emotions – that’s what painting can bring back and what I think AI cannot replace.

Which flowers I paint is determined by the season - I respond to what I see blooming in the garden and around my town. In early spring it’s Iceland poppies and tulips, daffodils and narcissus. In summer it’s sunflowers and dahlias and zinnias. In fall it’s all the shapes and colors of the heirloom chrysanthemums that my husband grows. In winter I might rest or paint brilliant amaryllis or bare winter branches. I’m writing this post in August, when I see sunflowers everywhere, so below are a few of my sunflower paintings, including one that I finished last week.