Garden Irises

This is a corner of my garden. I am going to a friend's garden to paint on saturday (if it does not rain) to work on a commissioned painting of her garden. I thought I should get warmed up so did this painting yesterday.

I learned a lot and this piece got me thinking about decision-making while painting. I find painting is a series of decisions, and my best paintings happen when I am not consciously aware that those decisions are being made; I am making them intuitively.

Originally this painting had more in it; the background behind the irises showed my neighbours garden. I changed this after asking myself 'what is the subject - the irises'. To bring more attention to them I cut out the detail behind. This decision gave large areas of colour for the eye to rest, but also made the background behind the painting shallower, more abstract in comparison to the plants.

I am happy with this piece but on the next one I will try and achieve more depth while still including the more abstract open areas of colour that I favour in my still lifes.

Painting landscape involves different decisions than painting still lifes and as with anything practice, practice, practice until it is intuitive.