Flowers in the Landscape
While most books on flower painting approach the subject as still life, this one places flowers in the larger context of landscape. The season, climate, light, mood, and perspective of landscape make flower painting infinitely more variable and complex. Bays, a successful painter, illustrator, and teacher in England, paints lilies in a home garden, wild roses in a hedgerow, and flowers along rivers and at the seashore. Her book is an example of another trend in art publishing, the appropriation of British publications for the American market. The quality of such books is generally excellent but, as in this case, the landscape, architecture, and gardens are decidedly British: Virginia creeper draping over a New England stone wall isn't part of the picture. Nevertheless, this is a fine book, written in fluid, readable style.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.