My name is Marney Ward and I am a floral watercolour artist in Victoria BC.  My love of flowers comes from my mother, who was a great gardener and whose spiritual beliefs were tied in some mysterious way to the abundance of the earth.  She created three beautiful gardens, more or less from scratch, and gave me one of my life-goals: in whatever way I could, to leave the earth a more beautiful place.

My mom grew up in the Kootenay Valley of BC, where the transplanted British grew apple orchards and tried to maintain their old world traditions of afternoon tea in their English gardens.  She often told me about the lovely “Peony Walk” in one of those Kootenay gardens. Her own substantial perennial borders always included peonies, and so of course, have my own more modest gardens.

My own background includes a PhD on the art and poetry of William Blake, teaching English at the University of Western Ontario, teaching Transcendental Meditation in Vancouver and Victoria, raising a couple of kids, and finally, in the early nineties, as I approached my fiftieth birthday, deciding to devote myself full-time to my art.  Of course, I wanted to paint flowers, not just because of the wonderful colours and patterns, but because of the way flowers capture and transform light.  There is a spiritual quality to flowers that speaks to a place deep within us, where joy and peace and wisdom dwell, a place we all long to hold onto.  Flowers have the ability to take us there.

So my art is an attempt to portray flowers both accurately and passionately.  I want to evoke a feeling of joy and delight, perhaps even reverence.  And I want to capture the essence of each particular flower I paint.  What is it about that flower I love so much, is it the richness of the colour, the complexity of the petals, the unusual pattern of the center, the fragrance, the way the flower moves in the slightest breeze, the fat prickly buds or the stained glass effect of the veining?  Whatever captures the essence of the flower, whatever moves my heart to joy, is what I want to express in my paintings.

I choose watercolour because the clarity and delicacy of the medium seems a perfect match for the fresh, pure beauty of a floral subject.  I work from photographs, which I take myself, mainly from my own garden.  Morning is the best time of day, and in the spring or summer mornings, strolling through the garden with my cup of tea and my camera, I think of my mother and her morning walks.

I take many close-ups of the same bloom, with a macro lens and a good 35mm slr camera, making sure all the various parts are in focus in at least one photo, and then step back to take the whole plant and the background. I then take separate shots of buds, seed pods, leaves, etc., trying to keep the sun at approximately the same angle so that later I can cut and tape these elements onto my base photo, in order to create an interesting composition.  My summer photographs will keep me painting all winter, and allow me to spend several weeks on each painting. More important than freezing the flower in time, they also freeze the light, which is essential for the backlit effects I prefer. I always look for interesting shadow patterns and hope for that “aha” moment when light floods through translucent petals and fills the soul with its radiance.

Once I am satisfied with my composition, I take my sketches and reference photos, and using my cropped and doctored photograph, draw it free-hand onto my stretched paper. Usually I square off the photo and the paper to make this easier. I like larger than life, close-up images, because they are more powerful. I then start painting the background first, then the middle ground, working around to the center of interest, usually the center of the flower. With peonies, I may have to mentally divide the central petals to reveal at least part of the center, which I may actually borrow from another photograph. I try to make sure the contrast in value (the range of light and dark) is sufficient to create a sense of drama.

With peonies, the complexity of the flower means a lot of sometimes tedious, careful work, but the result can be a shimmering, pulsating painting that takes you into the heart of the flower.  I want my viewers to feel as if they are staring into the flower itself, to lose themselves the way I am lost in the wonder of my own garden.  I am particularly fond of tree peonies and single Japanese peonies, and have painted them many times.  I hope my paintings give all who view them a glimpse into the majesty and the exuberance of these glorious flowers. It is my way of expressing my gratitude for all the beauty that has touched my life; it is my own humble contribution.

marneyward@shaw.ca

www.marneyward.com