My garden is usually teeming with poppies in June but this year something went wrong. Maybe it was the weather. Maybe my chickens ate them. (Because that happens. I have to wrap my pretty garden in not-so-pretty chicken wire for most of the summer and since summer was late this year, so was I.) But I did get a few plants sprung up and one of them is very happy and not even in the usual garden. It jumped the walk and planted itself in the most inhospitable thing that could be a flower bed it could possibly find. It had been a volcanic-rock-covered, no-respectable-plant-would-grow-roots-here kind of spot, but I'm glad the poppies found a home there. The sun hits it from the opposite direction as the usual garden and the light can be very dramatic. As it is my custom, I wanted to get some poppies painted this summer and summer was slipping away. This one started out with grey background and red poppies placed with authority. Sometimes you have to boss a painting around. Then came the blues and yellows, which together, of course, made green. I scratched in some stems and splashed in some light. It must have worked because it sold the first time I showed it. (thanks to my buyer!) Selling a piece its first time out made me feel like I know what I'm doing at least some of the time. Note to artists afraid to show your work: hardly anyone ever says if they don't like something. Showing your work is the best experience to keep you showing. As Nike says, just do it.
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