Description
An Expansive View
Look Closely is a large garden painting measuring 37x57x1.5” created with acrylic mixed media on canvas. After painting it flat on the wall, I had it professionally stretched for infinity-view gallery-wrapped sides. The sides create an expansive view that transforms a room’s atmosphere as it immerses you into luminous greens and layered movement. It’s a view that to me, feels like a bed of grape hyacinths from the chipmunk’s perspective.
The Painting Functions as Atmosphere
The painting functions as atmosphere as the field of greens and blues behave spatially which allows your eye to move. As well, luminous yellow-green passages create the sensation of illuminated air, and the darker, layered grasses establish depth and a sense of circulation.
With the macro view composition, there is an emotional entry. To prevent visual stiffness and to keep your eye circulating naturally, the vertical floral forms shift in density, weight, and direction. Almost like musical notes, the blue flowers create a rhythm that you feel instinctively. The painting functions less about object and more about the spring garden atmosphere.
Built Through Intuitive Mark-Making
The flowers and grasses are built through intuitive mark-making with looping marks, scraped lines, translucent layering, quick turns of the wrist, and passages where drawing dissolves. In this, it feels emotionally responsive and alive.
Within the composition, recognizable garden forms dissolve into intuitive mark-making and abstraction. The marks become almost calligraphic ~ revealing emotional tempo and physical responsiveness within the act of painting itself. Those layered blue flower-like forms, appear to vibrate within the field.
Visual Language Throughout this Large Garden Painting
My Melissa Lea visual language is clearly present throughout this large garden painting: luminous layered greens, emotionally responsive mark-making, atmospheric space, and a comfort with abstraction over representation.
The yellow-green atmosphere against the saturated blues creates a contemporary color tension that feels emotionally generated from within the painting itself. Light emerges internally through the composition, recreating the sensory experience of standing among growth. Through this visual language, we see movement, a shifting perception, and wonder.
The Closer You Are, The More You See in this Large Garden Painting
The title, Look Closely, becomes part of the viewing experience itself. As you move closer toward the large garden painting, it reveals scraped marks, softened edges, energetic scribbles, hidden drawing, and translucent passages layered throughout. These marks invite you to participate with imagination.
The closer you are, the more you see. The surface continually shifts between recognizable forms and abstraction, allowing the painting to change with distance, light, and attention over time.
Title: Look Closely
Medium: Acrylic mixed media on gallery wrapped canvas
Size: 36x57x1.5”
Style: Contemporary garden painting / expressive abstraction
View a short video of this painting on YouTube
