Artwork inspired by Nature

I feel inspired to paint by nature. I have always enjoyed walking and living in the Staffordshire Moorlands I feel particularly lucky to have such amazing scenery so close to where we live. If I was a landscape painter I would be spoiled for choice, but I am not. As colours inspire me, I prefer to get more up close to nature than take in the whole scene where the greens can become, for me, overwhelming. The below painting is of grasses as they flower, definitely one of my more impressionist paintings and this does have a more landscape feel to it.

Nature can capture my attention really suddenly and this happened recently. I was on a walk near to where I live and I literally stopped in my tracks. My eyes had caught the sight of some amazing pink cosmos flowers, there are beautiful flowers and these ones in particular were just stunning. I was then in a dilemma as to how I capture some images of them as they were not near to the footpath but growing around the front of the house. I decided to try and get a few images by using a zoom feature and if they did not look that good seeing if I could find some image on the web. Luckily the two photos I took were okay and the below is the painting I created.

There are certain plants in nature that I find just get my attention, the hydrangea is one due to the flowers. Hydrangeas come in shades of blues, white, pink and green. I discovered that the colours are based on the type of soil and in very rare cases the flowers are a mixture of blue and pink. The main thing for me is the big impactful blooms and when you look closely how they are lots of small flowers together. Below is the third painting I have done of hydrangeas, the first painting I eventually decided to sell of blue flowers, having had a number of offers for it. The second one was of pink hydrangea flowers and the most recent one is the below one of blue flowers.

Nature also has insects that naturally come with the flowers and in our garden we have a pond that adds another interest for me. I like to see the dragon and damselflies that sometimes appear in our garden. this inspired the below painting, a painting of a pink damsel fly.

Nature is also very different at each time of year, in Springtime nature seems to come alive and we are really lucky as bluebells appear everywhere. In the painting below I have captured some bluebells, putting them in a green background as they tend to prefer to grow in woods and not in direct sunlight.

Nature is my inspiration

Ruth Breen