Gerberas are colourful flowers belonging to the daisy family. They are named after German botanist and doctor Traugott Gerbera. Native to tropical areas of South America, Africa and Asia, they are also commonly known as the Afican Daisy (above right is a painting of my African Daisy from about ten years ago). Gerberas are the fifth most popular cut flower in the world after the rose, carnation, chrysanthemum and tulip. I felt like painting a Gerbera because of the bright colours. I also thought it would be an interesting perspective as a macro close focus style. I love the warm colours of red, orange and yellow which are the dominant colours with a bit of purple here and there to highlight sections.
Daisies and Gerberas are such popular flowers, even my favourite artist Andy Warhol has focused on them. He did a series of Daisy art screen prints in 1982, so were some of his later artworks. I love their simple bold colours and design elements (below left). He also did a series experimenting with colours schemes and contrasts with his "Flower for Tacoma Dome" (1982) series (below right) All my daisy paintings are available as prints by clicking on the image. The Gerbera original watercolour painting is now for sale.
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Still celebrating Australian Spring season and Daisies are another flower that is commonly associated with Springtime. This is a very diverse type of flower with around 20,000 different species worldwide. Around 1,000 different species are actually native to Australia. The other types are mostly native to North and Central Europe.
The daisy usually has white petals and a yellow centre, but can also be pink or purple in petal colour. The symbolic meaning for daisies is innocence, purity and new beginnings. The painting of the free form daisy on the left is fairly recent from my series of small paintings where I was trying to capture the essence of the flower in just a few brush strokes. The painting in the middle - Daisy Straw Flowers - is about ten years old and I really like the multi-coloured and bright colour composition. It really has a Spring / Summer feel to it. The painting on the right - African Daisy - is one of my earliest paintings and one of the first paintings to be done in a macro close focus style. Below is an oil painting by Georgia O'Keeffe of Pink Daisy with Iris 1927. I quite like the pink and grey pastel colour scheme. |
AuthorSacha Grossel is a practising Visual Artist from Australia. Archive
February 2019
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