Before They Were Cut: Plein Air

This painting is a recent "safer at home" afternoon plein air painting, I painted another of my backyard submissions (Springtime Reading Chair) in the morning and this in the afternoon. They are both quite large plein air works (40x32") so I worked on them over a couple of days. "Before They Were Cut" is a reflection on lilac flowers with all there sweetness, in full bloom, about to be cut and taken inside to inspire another kind of beauty... sometimes beauty comes from beauty and sometimes beauty comes from difficulty. I was thinking about all the strife in the world including the pandemic and at the same time thinking about my yearly ritual of filling the two vases we got for our wedding with flowers. It is a bitter-sweet painting...and that is the way I always feel cutting flowers from the garden. I hope you love it. PS the 3rd photo is me painting in my snowmobile suit...it got really cold one day .... lastly with larger scale works I have noticed the optimizer on the upload really diminishes the detail so if you need a higher res image, I 've got one!