Still life with flowers

St Joh's Lily and garden plants, oil on canvas, 2021.

The painted ladies appear every year in spring, delicate pink miracles along the crystalline sandstone path that is one of my regular dog walking routes. It’s a flat walk traversing a slope that catches the early morning sun, just outside Orange Kloof in Hout Bay. After four years of this routine, two of them in pandemic times, I know can expect yellow pincushions – proteas – at around the same time. From Facebook posts of mine I know their arrival almost to the day – early October. By late November, there is flowery chaos. It is a kind of daily heaven.

This series of still lives is a reflection on the gifts of the earth, a meditation on seasons, a way of giving thanks for this life. I'm starting painting again, with these four summer paintings, and I plan to do more.

Plumbago in vase, oil on canvas, 2022.

Flowers and snakeplant, oil on canvas, 2022.

St Joh's Lily in vase, oil on canvas, 2021.