Monday 22 November 2010

Poppies

 (Japanese papers with ink and acrylic. ca. 16.5 x 16.5 cm.)

 Lately poppies have been making their way into my collages.



 (Japanese and Florentine papers with ink and acrylic. ca. 9 x 9 cm.)


The first poppies I knew were of two varieties: the plastic Remembrance Day ones sold on street corners and in subway stations; and the ones creating a blazing, crimson field in a Monet painting.  The first time I saw a real one was on an unlikely, grotty Toronto street, years and years ago.  It seemed to grow up from the very cement right next to the metal post of a street sign.  I stopped and stared for longer than I should have.


 (Japanese papers with ink and acrylic. ca. 9 x 9 cm.)

Such a strong and fragile flower.  Exotic and intoxicating.  A shock of red on the most delicate, tissue paper petals.  A drop of blood from a doomed queen as she sits at her window with her needle and her dreams.   

5 comments:

  1. ooh, elegant and lovely...
    though the poppies I saw in France weren't quite crimson. More like fire red. A living colour - 'a splash from the cherry-red river that drives my mill'.

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  2. I love your poppies collages and paintings. Very elegant, like embroidery.

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  3. Thanks, Katherine. Yes, the poppies I've seen here in southern Germany have been more of that orangy-fire-red too. But, in my mind (and it's interesting how the mind's eye edits things for us) they are always that bright, new-blood red of the first live one I saw.
    (I had to look up the quote - evocative!)

    Thanks for your comment, Ghislaine. And welcome to my blog. I've been enjoying yours!

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  4. Those collages are lovely.

    I love poppies as well. Although the ones I think of are orange (a really orange orange) because mine were California poppies.

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  5. Thanks, Em. I've rarely seen really orange poppies. Must be stunning under the strong California sun.

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