Description
Red Peonies, Oil painting on gesso board. 8×8 inch/20x20cm painting size on a wide St Ives white frame. Framed size 13×13 inches/33.5×33.5cm £200
The peony season has arrived and these beautiful deep red/pink peonies arrived recently and had to be painted. The challenge of painting peonies is that they can open so quickly – especially in my garden studio. The solution was to bunch them together at the start of the morning to sketch in the shapes and then paint them one at a time keeping the others in a cold place. They were then reunited for the final painting stage. The alternative would be painting in a very cold studio.
For this painting I used a limited palette of mixes of Michael Harding’s Quinacridone Red and deep greens set against a warm cream background. The painting is framed in a St Ives white frame and is part of a series of small paintings using this same frame for an exhibition at Spetchley Park Gardens near Worcester. Other paintings in the group include Dizzy Daisies on Gold, Sorrento Lemon and ‘Pom Pom’ Pink Peonies.
