Pistils and Stamens
3 paintings, framed together, each is 10x15 inches. Gouache on paper, 2006
I wanted to do a painting of the sort of Flower Fairies who inhabit those sort of flowers - you know the sort that make you snigger (if you are as childish as me, at any rate). This was tricky as, back in March when I actually painted this, there wasn't a single Aurum Lilly in flower - the one on the far right (scroll across if you can't see it), which is the sort of flower I'd thought of first.... so I popped down the road where I confused a very nice florist by attempting to tactfully explain the sort of flower I was looking for. To cut a long story short I came back with a potted one of the thing on the left, which is called something unpronounceable, and a stem of the lily in the middle. The Aurum Lily was from photos. When I started out I rather imagined I would put more foliage in, but in the end I went for the structure and simplicity of each flower on its own.
Scroll across if you can't see all three
Fairy Art: 'Pistils and Stamens'
Actually they maybe aren't rude fairies themselves, I think - they're rather excitable and easily shocked by the look of them. On a botanical note - as suggestive objects these are actually all the wrong way round - the phallic sticking-up bit if each flower is actually the pistil - the female part. The stamens are the male bit with the pollen and all that - the purple bits around the pistil on the orange lily. On the other two flowers it is maybe a combined pistil and stamens, I'm not sure - I didn't really think it was my business to enquire on such a personal level...
Fairy Art
by Nancy Farmer
