It’s almost Palm Sunday. I did figure out what to do with my yucca leaves that I stripped from 4 mini trees. Weaving them into a mat like structure, they were instant canvasses for my acrylics! I got this!
Idleness is not my thing, so I painted on each 6 x 6 or 8 x 8 leaf mat that emerged. The process of thinking about how to take care of this biomass took several days. I wanted to make a lampshade out of some leaves. I started to destroy a tomato cage to be the skeleton of a lampshade. Sometimes you have to try different things and decide if it will work or not. One just has to patiently go back to your medium to get real outcomes. I left all those ideas, together with the leaves outside the house. I would come back to visit each canvas and then ruminate on ideas to paint.
Finally, I took acrylic paints and made floral subjects, lilies, orchids and sunflowers. They seemed so fleeting, so ready to dry up and lose their green luster. Yucca leaves are thick, hardy blades. They are prickly and can cut. They can grow a whole tree if you root the leaves in water and wait patiently. But my capacity to sit for that to occur is rather short.
My hallway is rife with old canvas paintings I have made, some that have hung on the walls. I took some down and mounted the yucca leaves on some colorful canvas with scenes of birds, abstract blocks, red decoupage art. There is a painting of an old bicycle made several years back. Reformatting my old art was my way of reviving old acrylics I have previously created and thought should just be kept under the bed or in a closet for no one else to see again.
My garden art has become happy in my yard where I spend a lot of my time watering and tending plants. The flowers are blooming even more now that I have painted them!
Leaves in paintings? They are so organic, the yucca leaves will turn brown eventually, but as in all things, the path to entrophy and decay moves us all toward a final end, everything just happens in God’s own time.
I slowed down that time a little bit, took a snapshot of ephemerality, yucca leaves, paintings, all fleeting pictures of moments well spent.
Creative and Imaginative Finds 