Acrylic on canvas, 16x20"

This was a commission for a lady who liked a previous painting I had done of dandelion seedheads but wanted a new version with brighter colours, not necessarily realistic, and including some of her favourite colours. Designing a painting collaboratively with her, it was exciting to see how the composition evolved, and interesting to see how another person interpreted the subject. I might not have thought about doing the painting in this style without her ideas but I find the outcome really pleasing. I've been thinking about what art movements the painting reminds me of and the ones that come to mind are fauvism, cloisonnism and synthetism. Fauvists eg Andre Derain, used unrealistic bright colours and expressive brushstrokes. I did that with the colours but my areas of colour are quite flat rather than expressive. Cloisonnists eg Paul Gauguin, used distinctly separate shapes separated by, usually dark, outlines. I've done this, but my outlines are brightly coloured rather than dark. These ideas moved on to synthetism. Here is a quote from Wikipedia: "Synthetist artists aimed to synthesize three features: The outward appearance of natural forms. The artist's feelings about their subject. The purity of the aesthetic considerations of line, colour and form." I feel that this describes the painting quite well, although synthetists often painted from memory whereas I used a photograph of real seedheads as a reference.