Water Lily
A water lily flower emerges from a pond, while a bright reflected sky provides a contrast to the dark water. Watercolour on paper – 23 x 30 cm.
£150.00
Another painting of a water lily. The mood here is sombre, the palette has a Victorian quality of decaying varnish. Just one flower emerges from the dark pond. A bright reflected sky, mostly cloudy, provides a stark contrast to the darkness – though even the muddy gloom possesses its own light.
I can’t recall the location now. It was obviously one of those days of white cloud, but with enough light to illuminate the deeper parts of the pond. There is something touching about the water lily. Most of the year it lies unseen, then purple shoots emerge and slowly unfurl into the most beautiful young green leaves. Below the surface of the water, the stems are dark and slimy with algae. Back on the surface, if conditions are good, the flowers emerge – so improbably lovely considering the bad smell of the ooze that sustains them.
The plant depicted is probably a hybrid of the European white water lily and a red variety from Sweden. I was interested to read that the root was used by monks and nuns as an anaphrodisiac – the opposite of an aphrodisiac.
You might also like my other water lily paintings: here is a rather brighter lily pond, and one of Koi carp feeding among lilies. And here is a much larger painting of water lilies.
