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Still Lifes

The floral still life drawings in crayon and pencil combine realism with folk art – folk art elements coming to the fore in the vases the flowers are placed in and often in the butterflies and bees visiting the flowers, as in ‘Tulips in Folk Art Pitcher’. The flowers themselves, whether drawn in crayon or pencil, are usually depicted in a naturalistic style and in the most realistic of these so are the butterflies – see ‘Blue Irises in White Crackle Vase with Clouded Yellow Butterfly’, and ‘Copper Bowl with Yellow Roses & Blue Adonis Butterflies’.

The one non-floral still life in this category is ‘Sophie’s Hankie’, a pencil work I created for one of the cameo illustrations prefacing the Coda in my poetry volume Landscapes of the Heart. It’s one of the most detailed drawings I have ever attempted – and possibly the most difficult, ever.

Then there’s the ‘Sleeping Cat’ – since the tree is a cut one for Christmas and the cat is sleeping I’m calling it a ‘still life’ – and it’s here because I didn’t know where else to put it. It’s my earliest drawing on the site, created about 1970 when I was still in college.