Challenge Day Four: Pink Carnations

"Pink Carnation"

Oil on Linen Panel "6x8" 

Available Here

 On day four of the challenge I chose a still life of a potter vase full of pink carnations. In line with my theme of 30 days of life in the Sacramento Mountains I chose my subject from right outside my front door.  We are blessed with great weather and soil in the mountains of Southern New Mexico which allows us to grow a wide variety of plant life. Taking advantage of the opportunities that are afforded to me in my natural surroundings, as a hobby aside from my artwork, I try to maintain a garden or two. I delight in helping my 89 year old father, James, a WWII Veteran that is still going strong, maintain his vegetable garden and i try to keep up with a meager flower garden of my own.  I have pink carnations growing in my flower garden along with petunias, snapdragons, calla lilies and gladiolas.  It always brightens my day to go outside and see beautiful flowers in bloom sharing all of their glory with the world.  Having fresh cut flowers in a vase or pottery can liven up a room and dress up any table. The pink carnations in this painting were a delight to capture and there is also the somewhat silly fact that I had to sav them from being trampled by our dog Whiskey. I have to keep a careful eye on my flower beds because Whiskey delights in tearing up freshly planted flowers. I have a feeling that he has a distaste for flowers in general and in keeping with that opinion probably wouldn't like my painting but I sure hope you do!

                                              "Whiskey the Destroyer of Flower Beds"


The pink carnations in this painting also trigger in my mind the old Marty Robbins tune "A white sport coat and a pink carnation" . While mostly known for gunfighter ballads and old west laments, Robbins sound was one of a kind and he possessed an uncanny ability to tell a vivid story with his songs that placed the listener right in the midst of every verse. I'd like to think that the carnations in my painting could easily be the carnation on the white sport coat in Robbins tale of teenage angst.