Torch Lilies and Bougainvillea—Nightfall

I began creating twilight paintings while still in art school forty years ago. For three decades that was my focus. In the early 90s I created a body of work for a solo exhibit called Twilight Opalescence. These were paintings of paper lanterns, lit with candles, strung through my garden and painted until it was too dark to see the colors on my palette. This was very popular series and I have always wanted to revisit it.

Our garden, on Whidbey Island, was created as a motif for my paintings. This year the Kniphofia rooperi have been resplendent. They remind me of paper lanterns hanging in the violet-blue twilight, glowing in the cool evening air. With a luminous Bougainvillea in the foreground, Canna blooms dripping in above and fragrant lilies towering in the distance this painting is an evocative record of the beauty that can be found immersed in a jungle garden as night falls.