Joe Ceballos

California, USA, Cecile Brunne Roses, oil, 9 x 12" (23 x 30 cm)

My Inspiration

Flowers and still lifes have been a big part of art history and a subject for many artists throughout the years. Every year, the giant rose bush in my backyard blooms with tons and tons of flowers; they seem to disappear as quickly as they arrive. This year I wanted to make a record of those flowers and capture them in a still life floral painting of my own. I thought it would be interesting to have flowers depicting the many stages of life, incorporating buds that were just starting to bloom as well as flowers that have withered away and lost all their petals. I wanted to paint their fleeting nature.

My Design Strategy

I knew I wanted the focus to be on the way the flowers related to each other and less on the vase, or in this case the mason jar, and the table it was sitting on. I decided to arrange the flowers against a dark gray backdrop, allowing the flowers to pop forward where the light hit them, creating a sort of rhythm between each shape of saturated color. I was interested in the flowers sitting as naturally as possible while forming a horizontal spread. When placing the flowers under the skylight, I looked for an angle that created areas that could be lost in shadows with barely detectable edges, which was another reason why I chose a similar gray tone for the background.

My Working Process

I picked the flowers from my backyard and painted from life in two sittings under early morning skylight in my studio. I work in oils on linen panels. I first thinly blocked in the big shapes, values and color, keeping everything as loose as possible before selectively bringing more detail into areas of interest. Worried the flowers would change, as they inevitably do, I first focused my attention on the younger buds, worked my way to the fully bloomed, then to the dead and, finally, the leaves. Knowing the light would also change on me, I worked over the course of two days, each time focusing on a particular area trying to keep each zone direct and fresh.