Imagine a bouquet of wild and cultivated roses, dahlias, daisies and gladioli. Now you have some idea of the glorious variety found among the top winners in their year's floral category. Award-winning artist and floral competition judge Charles Sovek commented, "It's always fulfilling as a judge to see a show both rich in diversity yet mature in style."
The winners, with past and present occupations ranging from lawyer to architect to florist, are unique as their artwork. A colorful bunch, they rely on a range of media, including oil, watercolor, acrylic, charcoal, pastel and colored pencil to bring their floral impressions to life.
While in nature the graceful shapes and bright colors of flowers attract pollinating birds and insects, in these works the same elements rivet the human eye. As Sovek says, "Maurice Dennis was right on the money when he said, 'Before a painting can become a face or tree or a landscape, it first needs to be considered as an interesting arrangement of two-dimensional shapes and colors.'" Read on to discover how the artists below applied this idea to create a bouquet of winning works.
First Place in National Competition Sponsored by The Artist’s Magazine
Robert A. Johnson:
Classicism in a Copper Pot
The entire span of existence is captured in Robert A. Johnson's first-place painting, Dahlias in a Copper Pot. The oil depicts a teapot overflowing with heavy-headed, later summer flowers. "Some of these flowers are fully blossomed, some are just opening, and some are already losing their petals," says Johnson. "In one way, I suppose, it's a metaphor for life."
Johnson searches out subjects for his floral still lifes at an inn near his Vienna, Virginia studio. He finds the mass-produced uniformity of a florist's blossoms uninspiring. To create an effective floral painting, "you have to start with flowers that quicken your pulse," he says. In this case, Johnson was attracted not only to the dahlias' rich purples, but also to their "weight, which gives their form an expressive flow."
Once the flowers have been selected, Johnson meticulously sets up a composition. Lighting is critical. He favors the clarity of light when it comes from a single, well-controlled source - for this painting, from the upper left. All extraneous light is then blocked out by screens.
To begin, Johnson worked on a quarter-inch-thick, untempered Masonite board. On top of that, he puts two coats of rabbitskin glue as sizing; these were sanded to perfect smoothness once dry. Then he applied and sanded two thin layers of white lead, taking appropriate precautions because of the lead's toxicity. The final lead coat was mixed with small amounts of raw umber, cobalt blue and black pigments. "This gave the surface a neutral, grayish tone," says Johnson. "A white surface can be obtrusive when you're painting."
Johnson uses mostly bristle brushes. For sharp lines, he says, "you have to have a chisel point on the brush, almost life a scalpel." He avoids using any medium except at the outset, when he needs very fluid paint to sketch in a loose layout."
Then, always mindful of a bloom's impermanence, Johnson starts by painting the flowers and works quickly outward, finishing each section as he goes. "At this stage, I'm playing a mental chess game, where I'm always thinking three moves ahead," he says. "So while I was painting the dahlias, I was planning how to pull in a bit of yellow in the Oriental rug behind them to make the purple in the flowers sing." The painting was completed in two intense, three-hour sessions.
Although doesn't make preliminary sketches for his oils, he's a firm believers in the adage that before you can paint well, you must first be able to draw. He hones his own drawing skills during regular visits to the Art Students League in New York, where one of his teachers was noted artist David Leffel. "Perhaps the highest honor I've received was when the board of the Art Students League recently voted to buy one of my drawings for their collection," he says.
Another important influence on Johnson was his later brother, Ben, an art conservator. Johnson had served as an assistant attorney general and had built a thriving legal practice when he made the decision five years ago to paint full time. In addition to providing encouragement, his brother "always wanted me to adhere to the highest standards - those of the old masters," says Johnson. He also helped arrange for Johnson to work as a copyist at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., where he had a chance to study Rembrandt's technique up close.
It's no surprise, then, that this 51-year-old artist adopts classical methods and materials in his won realistic work. Leaving the law for art wasn't a hard choice for Johnson. "I never realized that I would never know how far my art could go until it got my very best: my energy, my undivided attention, and my time. So there wasn't really any decision to make. It was just something I had to do."
