Peonies in Paris

On Friday someone commented,” Carol, i just love your peony watercolour sketches! Will you be offering them for purchase? I think of them as "A Suggestion of Peonies." 🌸 

A seed was planted. Late at the Sunday Bastille marché, finally headed home, loaded with pamplemousse, I noticed the flower stand was packing up. 

Sia Again

#167 Lettre à Marguerite, original watercolor,9" x 11"

I’m fixated on painting flowers in glass vases this week.

So it's back to the beautiful Parisien flower shop, SIA...

Please Paint a Peony

Pink Peony, 12" x 15" watercolor

You give me ideas. Not so much directly when you tell me what to write or paint. More indirectly, more intuitively, when you mention something in passing, and it strikes a chord.

 I just gave you 3 peonies in one day. OK more peonies.

I remember a peony I met in Paris last May...

Next door to my pied à terre was a tiny flower shop, just a closet really. I wanted one flower for my still lifes so I went in for a look.
The owner was cranky...

Was he going to let me buy one flower?

When I heard the price for a bud, I hesitated..
Misha said, “Oh you didn't go in there?”

Trop cher (too expensive!)

That one bud lasted for 2 weeks. Opening a little more each day, quite happy to try different poses and very pleased to sit beside Paris' best desserts.

 There's something about a peony.

The Last Flowers of Manet (Abradale Books) Manet was smitten with peonies and painted them over and over, all colors. During the last 3 years of his life, while gravely ill, he painted on a smaller scale. Friends would bring the convalescing artist bouquets of flowers. Those flower paintings are his most poignant, most evocative, most intimate. Did that cranky florist whisper sweet nothings to his flowers when no one was around? Yesterday, Naturegirl said...please a...peony