CONEFLOWER • 12″ x 12″ oil painting • ©2015 Marie Scott
Coneflower is part of my “Sad Flower” series — a series of four botanical paintings, representing four heavy-hearted flowers I found growing in various locations.
In the twelve-plus-years I’ve been painting, I have never created a “sad series.” I guess I’d never felt such a heaviness of heart before as when I was planing this new group of four botanical paintings.
But as always happens, the process of putting color onto a blank canvas helped to heal my soul.
The process of diving deep into “the hole” — the place where my mind can focus on dissecting the shapes and colors which make up a painting — is good mental therapy. Unravelling, and then transferring a mess of disjointed pieces onto the canvas is quite an intense brain workout. It is hard thinking with a healthy purpose.
The payoff usually comes about halfway through the process, as order begins to take shape, and the mystery of the dark shapes magically transform into a recognizable form.
Beauty out of chaos.
Creating a new painting also always helps to put the disjointed pieces of my life into perspective. I love this.
The process of painting, never fails to remind me that the God of the universe is at work on the painting of my life. And He really does have a plan for how it will look when it is all finished. A plan that is not always easy to see in the midst of the often seemingly unrelated, individual pieces set before me at the moment.
Coneflower is a reminder to me that even when I am in the midst of what feels to be the darkest of times, I can rest. Even though I may not yet know what the whole picture on will look like in the end, it is definitely a work in progress.
Progress with a purpose. Shadows with a plan.
And even when the shadows sometimes feel as if they are overtaking my world, and the sun will never reappear, my hope comes from knowing that this life here on earth is just the prequel to the perfect story I will live for all of eternity.
No matter how the painting of this life turns out… the best is yet to come.
But until then… enjoy this free desktop calendar featuring my painting called “Coneflower” for the month of February, 2016 by simply clicking on the image to download and then set as your computer wallpaper.
Be sure to enjoy the extra day at the end of this month too!
To see my entire gallery of colorful paintings, visit my website at www.mariescottstudios.com
