Poppies (2020)
California State Flower
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The original painting for Poppies is available for a limited time here.
Growing up in San Jose, I didn’t see much of our state flower. Up in Sonoma County however, they are everywhere and are great to see.
If you have the misfortune of dating or marrying an artist who likes to take reference photos, you will often find yourself waiting for them while they fall behind to take pictures of random fences, shadows on streets, and other generally non-picturesque things. Or they may suddenly pull over on the side of the road to catch a shot of something, or excitedly have you take a picture of a sky out a car window while driving.
In this case, we pulled over in front of this large field for me to get out and crouch low to photograph these flowers. Thankfully, my wife likes wildflowers so this time it was no big sacrifice. I don’t know that I had it mind to paint poppies—I have a folder of images I’d like to paint already. It’s odd how sometimes the inspiration of the moment and the momentum of the immediate causes you to focus on something in front of you instead of long-desired goals or plans. In life, this might be a bad way to operate. In painting, it’s pretty harmless: this landscape or that one.
For some reason, we always heard growing up that picking the state flower was illegal. That is not strictly true, although basically removing any plant from land that isn’t yours is illegal, so practically speaking we still can’t pick them. But, they are easy to spread seed for and I’ve always harbored the desire to run about our hillsides sprinkling tons of poppy seeds, which would consequently probably destroy the local ecology.
But I can paint as many as I want.
The original painting for Poppies is available for a limited time here.