Well, unlike many of my online artist friends, I didn't do the January edition of the 30-Paintings-in-30-days challenge (too much on my plate). But I will indulge you in a series of posts with my last series. 30 days is about how long it took me, too!

If you had an opportunity to see these at the Blue Line in Roseville, thank you! If not, sit back and enjoy the luscious, fluid and vibrant paintings just as I did creating them. 

This one is a California (Golden) Poppy. I like the level of abstraction I was able to achieve here and I'm still swooning over the yellow paint that spread into the dark areas. 

Golden poppies were an exciting discovery for me 12 years ago, when I moved to Sacramento, California, from Ukraine. I have never seen them before or thought that flowers could have this wonderful, rich orange color. Poppies in Ukraine are red. And they have a different shape. And when they dry up, you can harvest them for poppy seeds or use their seed pods as rattles.

So, anyway, California poppies still feel a bit exotic to me. Even after 12 years. Maybe that's why I painted quite a few this time around. More to follow :)