Not Taking Time to Look at a Flower

I thought I knew what a rose looked like until I tried my first painting of one, thinking I was exempt from Georgia O'Keefe's thought about not bothering to really look at flowers, especially since I garden.  But I wasn't.

The first O’Keefe flower pastel I encountered was so heavily covered with pigment I was amazed, a powdery surface not to been seen in books.

The oil below is from my favorite rose in the fabulous garden at the Barnes Foundation outside Philadelphia.  ( Go if you have the chance, only Impressionist paintings not to be seen elsewhere).  I loved the pink, pink, pink.  But as complicated as the rest of nature, once you really look!

In the Pink
Oil  6 x 6