I have been working on the idea for this painting for a couple of weeks now. It was a very good job we had a digital camera for the reference photos for this one because we needed a lot of photos to get the composition I wanted.
I loved the idea of broken glass rose petals falling to symbolize how shattered we feel when a relationship breaks up but WOW!!! it's hard to capture the 'moment' on camera. I ended up dropping the glass petals onto a cushioned floor to the count of 1 2 3 drop to help James coordinate pressing the shutter. We missed many many times but perserverance paid off and we managed to get a few good photos for me to use.
I decided to keep the colour palette simple as I had done for the other glass rose painting but this time I have chosen to use pinky reds as they are the traditional colours associated with love. I am working from 3 different photographs as I paint this. Each photo was taken with identical lighting but taking each rose and then the falling petals separately enabled me to then play around with the composition more easily. I am having to change the colours of the roses as I paint them because the roses I have are turqouise and purple. I am currently painting the shattered rose a traditional red. I still have the falling petals to paint but the rest of this rose is almost done.
I plan to make the other rose a much much deeper dusky red, the colour a very deep red rose goes as it is dying. I am sure each viewer will read there own 'story' into this painting. Maybe the deeper rose symbolizes death of a partner, or just merely the death of the relationship.
This painting is relatively small at 21 by 10.5 inches. Its a bit of a shock working small again. Glazing the tiny rose petals is quite fiddly and time consuming so it may take me several days to finish this one.
Ona
