Semi-Abstract Floral Still Life: A Painting Inspired by Dutch Masters
This week, I want to show you a piece called Damask. It is a dark, semi-abstract floral painting. I often try to create lighter works because they sell faster, but if it were up to me, I would paint almost only dark pieces.
There is something valuable and very private about dark tones. The painting felt so private that I originally thought about just posting a photo of the finished work and keeping the process to myself. But the purpose of my blog is to inspire you to create. Seeing only the final result rarely inspires as much as seeing the imperfect beginning where everything started.
Inspired by Dutch Old Masters
My painting is about how ornaments can be traced back to nature, but it is also a tribute to 17th and 18th-century Dutch floral paintings. The concept – dark background, lots of details, beauty after beauty – doesn’t leave me alone – it is like a recurring fever.
>> See the blog post “Flower paintings at Rijksmuseum”
And there is only one cure: starting a new dark still life, without references, just by painting freely.
How to Start a Semi-Abstract Floral Painting
At first, I used a broad brush and painted simple shapes with different colors.
Then I decided what flower to enlarge and what to hide. Some flowers appeared, but then disappeared when the painting progressed. I like to think that some flowers are born just to give birth to other flowers.
Why Mastering Technique Is Never Enough
I have noticed technical progress in my work. As things get easier, I can set more challenging goals for myself. However, I don’t believe that art is just about mastering technique, or that painting flowers is only about using them as decoration.
When you start a new work, you create a space around you.
It is a private and special place.
While I was making this piece, I felt like I was in an old room. I could hear the wooden floor creak and the wind blowing behind the old window glass. And yet, I felt I was wealthy. I was far away in the past, but I didn’t feel homesick at all.
The longer I have made art, the clearer my vision has become. Intuitive work is not about copying an image from your mind. It is about your work and your imagination starting to share the same atmosphere.
Here you can see the painting in different stages. Some might please you more, but I was after the special place, remember.
Here’s the finished piece, ready to be photographed.
Your Intuition – Your Private Atmosphere
So, what matters is the atmosphere you want to build. This is why it doesn’t really matter if you paint flowers or faces. From this perspective, all art is abstract. It is not just about thinking of the composition as abstract —it is about the character of each detail and how it connects to your private place (that then opens up to the viewer, too).
Here are some detail pics of my semi-abstract floral painting called Damask.
Friends in Art
Art is a private experience. Through my online courses and videos, I am visiting your private space. I often imagine that we are visiting each other. When the lesson ends, we both return to our own worlds, feeling inspired. It is hard to grow—both technically and as an artist—if you always keep the door closed.
Welcome to my courses to improve your skills and your artistic thinking! If you need more inspiration, feel free to browse my blog archives by date, category, or supply. I have shared my journey here every week for over ten years.
Building a Mystical Course with Hilma, Georgiana, and Virginia
Usually, after making a course, I think: never again! It takes time to get new ideas and energy. But this time, after finishing Wild Garden, I had a new idea right away, and it felt like someone was talking to me: “You must do this, Päivi. If you don’t, nobody else will.”
The upcoming course is called Mystical Minis. We will create abstract art with colored pencils.
We will make small drawings, and each takes only about an hour to create. At the same time, we see our inner world in a new light and build a self-feeding process for creating art. This course will bring both excitement and depth to your art-making. I believe it will leave a permanent mark on you, and I hope you carry the influence of it with you for a long time what ever art you make after the course.
Mystical Trio: Hilma, Georgiana, and Virginia
With Mystical Minis, I honor three women from about 100 years ago. Two of them are pioneers in abstract art: Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) and Georgiana Houghton (1814-1884). The third one is the modernist author Virginia Woolf (1882-1941). You can’t find another course similar to this one, I promise!
Mystical Flow
I have been super-motivated to create the new course. So far, I have also enjoyed making it immensely. Some courses are born with intention, while others come out naturally, and those love children need to be born without too much forcing. It’s the very same thing as in the art-making! This course wants to come out, and I will help it.
I usually question the course idea many times before I start making the course. I especially think about whether anyone will buy it and what kind of people would. But here, it feels like Hilma, Georgiana, and Virginia do not care. They just want the course to be born. They want their voice to be combined with mine, and that brings an extraordinary meaning to this work that truly feels mystical.
If you have been in my courses, you know that I am not a secretive person. I always try to explain everything as openly as I can, and I can’t help smiling. And when I asked Hilma, Georgiana, and Virginia, why they picked me, they said: we need somebody like you to complement us, just be you and everything will go fine. And I have trusted them and followed my inner voice to gather all of us together, not only Hilma, Georgiana, and Virginia, but also you who want to create a new kind of connection to your inner world.
Mystical Minis – When?
I am currently editing the videos. I don’t have the exact publishing date yet, but I expect releasing this mystical course late this year or early next year.
Following the Inner Color
Here is my latest completed oil painting “Elixir.” I start my abstract paintings with the idea that I follow an inner color.
Color Chooses Color
The inner color is the color I feel drawn to, so I tend to pick and mix the first colors intuitively. And then, they wish for other colors to accompany them.
Colors also evoke shapes, and the shapes bring in more colors. A raw and bright color selection changes slowly to a more sophisticated one. In this color-driven technique, the inner color changes as the painting matures.
I try to give my painting enough time to find its own soul and paint several sessions, letting the paint dry between them.
First a Child, Then a Teenager
When the painting is only a child, I don’t care about the composition or what it will represent. I don’t want to force a short childhood or early adolescence. When puberty begins, it’s tempting to call the painting finished. But only then does she begin to find her own, unique mission and get prepared for a long life.
Teenagers often tell how they want to be called. When this painting was still unfinished, she was Ophelia because she saw herself as John Everett Millais’s painting from the 19th century.
I usually give the final name only when the painting is almost finished. Then I know what I want to emphasize with the name. Maybe we humans should get our final name a little later too?
Early Goodbye
I take pictures of my canvas paintings outside if possible, because that’s where the light is most natural. My husband often acts as my assistant and holds the painting against the wind. Most of the time, I end the photoshoot by saying to him, “Hey, come take a picture of us together!”
Since I sell all my paintings, this is the moment when I’m saying a mental goodbye to them. I assure them: “You’ll be fine. Everything’s going to be fine.” Even though I often miss my paintings, I don’t tell them. I feel like their mission is bigger than mine, and my job is to deliver all this for others, not for myself.
I have practiced most of my oil painting techniques in a quicker medium, so in watercolor!
Wild Garden – You Can Still Hop in!
In Wild Garden, we will paint freely, intuitively, and expressively in watercolor from Sept 22 to Nov 14. We will begin with floral greeting cards and gradually move forward in expression.
The course has just started but you can still hop in!
>> Sign up now!
Painting a Mystery
This week is about painting a mystery and entering another world through art-making. My paintings are in an art journal and made with a loose touch.
It All Started from a Withering Bouquet
“The Midsummer bouquet has withered. I have to throw it in the trash,” I said. “But the setting is just like those old masters’ paintings,” my husband replied unexpectedly. And so I remembered this once again.
Once Upon a Time
Once upon a time, there was
and there still is a world that you can get to from anywhere.
At first, it’s dark, but you can hear a woman reading a letter to someone.
You hear a clock ticking backwards, generating more time.
Then you know that it’s time to take a brush in your hand.
Squeeze the handle firmly and hear the trees moaning as their trunks slowly sink to the ground.
First, it feels silly to paint because there’s nothing to see.
But the darkness gradually disappears, and you realize that you are not alone.
Those strange creatures are all familiar to each other and, in a strange way, to you too.
In this world, everything has been mixed up.
You are the wind that shook the flower, and in blowing the petals back, you lost your soul to it.
You are the chair for which the imagination built a room to rest.
In this world, everything is unfinished. But if you are willing to hear and feel instead of only seeing what’s expected, everything is ready enough.
Painting a Mystery – Background Story
The idea of this blog post came from that short conversation with my husband. Then I had to take a photo of the bouquet and make it in the style of old masters.
After that, I remembered taking a photo of a painting called “Woman Reading and a Man Seated at a Table” at the exhibition of the H’Art Museum in Amsterdam. The painting is by Frans van Mieris from 1676.
While browsing my image archive, I was drawn by another photo, taken in the same trip to Amsterdam. It was a decorative mantel clock from 1782 in the Rijksmuseum.
The clock took my thoughts to a more recent visit in Porvoo, Finland, where my husband and I went to see Johan Ludvig Runeberg‘s home. The lovely interior was from the 1860s, and there was a big painting that I really liked. I took a photo, but haven’t succeeded in finding out who painted it.
After gathering the photos, I picked up my art journal (Dylusions Creative Journal Square) and started painting. I didn’t copy the photos, but let them soak in freely. I was just inspired by the atmosphere they evoked in me.
Hopefully this blog post inspires you to paint freely without strict plans and definitions. Painting a mystery is both fun and addicting – I am already eager to create more!