Painting Poppies! What influences YOUR art?

by Karen Lynn Ingalls

Some years back, as I was setting up for the Open Studios show we used to do in Yountville, a friend popped around the corner, took in the oranges and blues of one painting in particular (where the blues were a little purple-ish) for just a second or two, and exclaimed, “Poppies and lupine!” — though it was a vineyard scene. 🙂

California Poppies, at Cuvaison Winery, taken in April, 2019 • © Karen Lynn Ingalls

It occurred to me that one of my favorite places when I was a child was the half-acre meadow next-door to our house, where we lived till I was seven. A golden palomino named April lived there, and I called it “April’s Field.” ​

Poppies at Prickett's Nursery in Rincon Valley a couple of years ago • © Karen Lynn Ingalls

Each spring it was filled with beautiful California poppies and blue lupine. (Appropriately named, wasn’t it?) I loved taking it in, climbing in between the strands of barbed wire, walking into the middle of it, and feeling surrounded by flowers!

"Pattern of Poppies" • Acrylics on canvas • 8" x 10" • © Karen Lynn Ingalls

​But it had never occurred to me before that it might have influenced the colors that I eventually evolved into loving perhaps the most… and which really came to life after I’d moved back up to northern California, and was once again surrounded by the colors I’d loved so much growing up. 

(You may guess, seeing poppies and lupine always makes me smile.)

"Field of Poppies" • Acrylics and Collage on Canvas • 5" x 7" • © Karen Lynn Ingalls

Perhaps that's why, when I was working on my "Beauty from Ashes" series after the Northern California wildfires, and feeling the need to rise from the ashes, I could see patterns of poppies in fields, in closeup photographs I'd taken of the melted corrugated metal of my barn studio's roof.

Melted metal roof of my barn studio after the Tubbs Fire in 2017 • © Karen Lynn Ingalls

I finally painted some small pieces of poppies, as demonstrations of different approaches to abstract landscape and rhythm-and-pattern paintings, a couple of years ago (no lupine, though! Not yet, anyway). ​

"Field of California Poppies" • Acrylics on canvas • 8" x 10" • © Karen Lynn Ingalls

Have you considered where your painting influences come from? Perhaps they come from artists you’ve admired for years… or the environment around you… or perhaps new discoveries during these last couple of years? ​

"California Poppies in a Field" • Acrylics on canvas • 8" x 10" • © Karen Lynn Ingalls

Or perhaps they may have come from the first few years of your childhood, along with the wonder and delight they originally evoked, that tucked themselves into your subconscious, and pop up into the artwork you make today....

You never know... it's possible!

#californiapoppies #poppypaintings
#californialandscapepainting #paintinginspiration