Two New Rose Paintings with more Art than Business

Hope everyone is well out there. Now if the ever-present TV and Radio Ads  are anything to go by, we are surely barrelling toward Christmas. 

I'll try not to overdo the messages myself, so maybe just one more after this one. As for today I've two new rose paintings for you, or rather one genuinely new, and one new-ish. This will make sense in a bit. Oh, yeah I should also mention that if anyone is waiting for any discounts for the Christmas season, or indeed beyond, this isn't in the planning at all. If anything, I'm trying to resist pushing prices in the other direction to make what I do a little more viable. Anyway, enough on that for now and onto the work at hand! 

The first painting is this new fiery orange blossom one below, I think aptly named "Flaming Nature". I have to say I’m really very taken with this one, and particularly loving how the colours came out. All those vivid yellows, oranges and reds kind of singing out against the cool blue-greens fading into the background. And it’s kind of funny how with all the rose paintings under my belt I’ve never painted this colour combo before. 

More details on Flaming Nature and purchase options here.

Besides the colours this painting is also novel in that I rarely, if ever, paint so many flowers on a single canvas. It’s kind of rule if truth be told, especially for the small-ish canvases, as painting multiple flowers tends to multiply the days it takes to complete something, and this one took nine days God help me! Even for me this is a lot of noodling on a modest canvas, and does make something of a mockery on business side of the equation. Ah well, not the first time the spirits of art and business went their own way. 

As for the next “new-ish” painting, this is really an oldie that’s been revamped. And in choosing to do this, I somewhat foolishly broke yet another rule; The rule being: “don’t go tinkering with paintings that are long-finished and varnished and ready for the world.”
What happened though was a few months back I put this painting called “Solar Rose II up on the easel, when a sneaky inner-voice took hold in my crazy head; It’s intent was to point out all the little flaws and to convince me that it was a good idea to strip off the varnish, mix up some paint, and make some swift corrections.

More details on Solar Rose II and purchase options here.

Of course what happened next was anything but swift, but more like an example of out of control mission-drift. Over the course of a few weeks I ended up re-working the whole rose more than once. And again the math of days of work versus likely financial reward not sitting well together. 
 
And yet, if I've failed in the financial arena here, I do feel satisfied that I've done some good work in the artistic arena. After all, this reimagined Solar Rose II painting, is a far stronger work for all the pains it took. And Flaming Nature, with that multitude of orange blossoms to paint, would not have been the same if even one had been left out, or indeed, if it had been rushed in a slap-dash manner. 

I guess in the end this oil painting business often runs to a different sort of old-world-clock, which is no doubt out-of-kilter with our modern world. But still, I do think there's something special about things made slowly, with love, care and foolhardy attention. Things made to last.

More info on "Northern Lights II: A study" and purchase options

By the way, I just stuck in this last rose called Northern Nights above both because it's an older one I like and still have, and it seems to sit well with the chilly frosty mornings we've been having here in Ireland of late. 

Thanks for reading and all the best until the next one!
Vincent 

PS. Next time a few more paintings and of course will give the prints a plug for Christmas too:)

Vincent Keeling
vincentkeeling@gmail.com

ROSE PAINTING GALLERY BY VINCENT KEELING