Energies of Creation » Gardening for Art

Purple Iris and Paintings

Lexi Sundell — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 02:51:43 +0000

Spring is late and confused in Montana this year. Everything is about a month behind normal, if anything can be said to be normal these days. However, my purple irises are in peak bloom now.

The tubers were a gift from an artist friend. He had not divided his iris in years so they quit blooming from overcrowding. As he shaped up his property to put it on the market, he ended up with a large surplus of this particular iris and I was the lucky recipient.

This is the first year they have been enthusiastic about blooming here and I am ecstatic. I want to paint more of them and now I have a yard full of the beauties!

The light was lovely on them this morning. We had high thin clouds providing a variety of lighting conditions. I thoroughly enjoyed photographing the flowers from all sorts of angles.

On cold January days I will use these photos to remember the garden as I prepare to paint my irises. Slideshows of several hundred glorious iris will be the perfect launch for those winter paintings.

You can view Fires of Creation, a new painting from this variety of iris.

Gladiolas and Inspiration

Lexi Sundell — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 23:09:12 +0000

I happened to see a photo of a Priscilla Gladiolus nearly a year ago in a photo competition. I immediately knew I had to grow that wonderful flower.

The bloom has a spectacular blending of colors. Yellow is splashed on the lower petals blending into pale pinks and corals. Those pinks and corals become darker toward the outer edges of the petals. I was enthralled with the flower.

I tracked down a supplier of the bulbs and planted them in my hoophouse this spring. Gladiolas have not much liked the outdoors in my yard so I thought the hoophouse might be the better environment for them.

However, summer was hot, really hot. My poor gladiolas survived in their pots but all the flowers had unpleasantly brown singed petals. Viewing the uninspiring lot of them, I embarked upon plan B.

I had not planted all the bulbs as I ran out of time. The poor neglected leftovers got a second chance for glory. I planted them in midsummer in a large pot in the hoophouse.

They slowly stirred themselves and began growing. Fall came before they had even thought of blooming. As the nights grew colder I decided to shut down the hoophouse.

To my surprise, one of the plants in the large pot had a flower stalk almost ready to open. Excitedly, I loaded the pot in the wheelbarrow and took it in the house.

So my gladiolus finally bloomed with exquisite flowers last week. No brown edges, just the gloriously lovely colors in the photo I had seen months ago!

These blossoms have now withered, but I have hopes of some of the other plants blooming in that same big pot. I am sure I will be painting Priscilla Gladiolas this winter after all!

Center of the Sun

Lexi Sundell — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 04:24:30 +0000

This painting is the visible apex of a multifaceted creative adventure. I painted it at a time my gardens were undergoing rapid expansion, particularly with thousands of my favorite poppies, those amazing Shirley poppies. These gardening projects were propelled by the energy processes I use on a daily basis. Both Reiki and the Perelandra nature processes provided the primary energies in that phase of my garden development.

My paintings were also infused with Reiki, often spontaneously, while I was working at the easel. I, as many artists do, often feel that my paintings have their own source, an origin other than me. As an interesting experiment, I began to deliberately bring Reiki into the paintings after I found it unexpectedly occurring.

When the paintings were completed, I saw that some of them were still radiating that energy without further input from me. I had not anticipated such a result, so I watched in the gallery to see how people would respond. The obvious first question was whether it was something only I would notice about the work.

Center of the Sun provided dramatic answers to that question. I leaned it against the taboret temporarily prior to rehanging the gallery. The light on it was poor in that location but I was concentrating on another painting I was trying to finish.

Within the same week two different women who did not know each other walked into the gallery on different days. Each was casually browsing until arriving in the middle part of the gallery where I had the Center of the Sun leaned against the taboret.

In both cases, the woman noticed the Center of the Sun, paused, and then started looking at the painting with more intensity. Both began sobbing. Somewhat in shock, I listened to each lady tearfully tell me of their hearts opening, remembering beauty and passion in their lives. They were utterly overwhelmed by their feelings.

I was quite unprepared for those responses. In fact, I went and bought more Kleenex for the gallery. Neither of the women bought the painting, but each went on her way deeply moved.

I continued to observe what happened with the painting. People continued to respond to it, but not in such extreme fashion as the first two ladies. Then the painting was chosen for a winter show at the Yellowstone Art Museum. I am happy to say Center of the Sun did find a home with someone who loved the painting.

Note about Lexi Sundell’s painting: “Center of the Sun” is acrylic on canvas 60″ wide by 46″ high. Other original paintings and prints available at RiverStone Gallery.

Note: This post is now featured on the New Blog Carnival. Have a look to find some other new and interesting blogs!

This post also appears in the Arts & Stuff Carnival, which has an interesting collection of creative articles.

Flowers and Paintings

Lexi Sundell — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 04:51:11 +0000

I was still trying to paint the wood end walls of my new hoop house one morning when the poppies burst into bloom in my yard. It was summer and our art gallery was so busy I only had an hour or so at dawn to work on the painting project. I headed out the door that day with my paint roller and only got as far as the big rectangle garden.

The newly opened shirley poppies stopped me in my tracks. Their fragile translucence in the dawn light mesmerized me. Any thoughts of painting the hoop house walls dissolved unnoticed in the soft dawn light as I immersed myself in the poppies.

I think about six weeks passed before I resumed work on the hoop house. In the meantime I began painting large canvases blazing with poppies. As far as I was concerned, the bigger the better when painting them. This series of paintings were five and six feet long by about four feet high, so I could really play with the luminous colors of those incredible flowers.

The following summer I was still passionately painting flowers and had a much more definite idea of what I wanted to grow for my paintings. I planted more shirley poppies and deadheaded them vigorously to prolong the blooming period. The hoop house was inspiring me to try other flowers in the garden as well.

Before my startled husband could protest, I was creating new gardens. Dump truckloads of manure were brought to the yard followed by more tilling. After three years of expansion I had added enough flower gardens to mostly fill our two lots, all laid out to catch the dawn light when the flowers are at their most magical.

I had no idea where this was to lead me as I grew increasingly large quantities of poppies. I ended up with so many I could no longer deadhead the plants. I took thousands of photos each summer so I could revisit the garden any time I needed, including during the deep cold of a Montana winter.

The flowers taught me how they best showed their incredible energies in the early dawn light. I became friends with the bees, which were taking their own harvest in the flowers. This could make my pictorial harvest difficult as I would sometimes find four or five bees at once in a flower I fancied. The solution was to blow on the bees, who became irritated and flew off to more welcoming flowers. I had enough time to shoot one or two photos before more bees arrived.

I wore out two or three Nikon 990 cameras in the course of all this and then switched to a Canon dslr. This proved to be a double challenge in that I was not familiar with slr photography and nor with the myriad digital controls on the camera.

Fortunately Gerry Mooney, one of our artists in the gallery, was willing to teach a photography workshop at the Diamond J Ranch when we offered to sponsor him. I took the workshop myself and found my photo quality dramatically improved.

I continued painting huge florals without wavering in my enthusiasm for the shirley poppies. I particularly love the ones with either a white picotee edge, or a white center blending outward to colored edges. These paintings were popular in the gallery and began shipping all over the country.

As the body of work grew, Poppyfire Press published my first book, Flowers of the Dawn; Paintings and Poetry by Lexi Sundell. It is a limited edition fine art book hand bound in calfskin with handmade paper fly leafs. And still the poppies bloomed and I continued painting.

Quarto in London, England contacted me to do a second book, which will be published in August 2007. This has been an even more massive undertaking than the first book. In a few days I hope to have all the work completed for it.

It is now the deep quiet of winter and my gardens sleep in the cold snow. I remember that first summer when I had the hoop house installed and smile at the unexpected direction the gardens have led me.