Just in time for Valentine’s Day, I finally completed my painting, Purple Kitsch, as part of my flowers in plastic series. This watercolor painting was an overly ambitious and frustrating painting to create. I had all sorts of difficulty with the kitschy purple plastic wrap, which is what drew me to the image initially. The image came from a photograph I took last year, at our local grocery store.

All watercolor paints have different transparency/opaqueness and some pigments leave gradated sediment in the texture of the paper. Even though I did multiple test swatches, and thought I found the perfect combinations of colors for the bright purple hearts, when I started working on my actual painting it was a disaster. I had to “erase” several areas of the painting multiple times, to try and get a smooth glaze of paint. As my frustration grew, I did everything possible to avoid painting for weeks. When I spend weeks or months on one painting, it’s not so easy to give up and throw it out, as much as I wanted to do with this one. This painting was a lesson in perseverance and humility, and I’m so glad it’s done!

Here is the final watercolor painting, followed by a short work in progress montage.