Zinnias

Flowers of childhood, Zinnias, reminded me of my mother and long hot summers in our suburban backyard. These flowers are easy to grow from seed, and incredibly hardy and colorful. With a longevity of bloom all the way through autumn, they are a reassuring subject.

The palette here was mostly red bordering on strawberry and pink—somewhat muted as if seeing it through a bleaching sheet of sunlight. Then, I mixed the red arrangements with a jumble of green which recalled the zinnias’ dry green leaves.

At this point, I started topically applying, more than blending, brush strokes to more clearly articulate the gesture of actually ‘painting’. But I also was trying to capture the ‘layeredness’ and ‘crowdedness’ of a bed of bright vigilant summer flowers.

–STELIOS author of The Oculus