Week #51, Flower Still Lifes III

Untitled (Floral Still Life), c. 1937, watercolor on paper, 8 ½” x 11”

Dated a little later than the first two examples of floral still lifes, this work by Dusti Bongé already is starting to look more abstract. We start to notice that the work becomes more and more about the disposition of colored shapes and less and less about representation. And yet somehow we can still tell that it is a bouquet of flowers in a vase.

In this composition the flowers take over much more of the pictorial space with some blooms reaching almost all the way to the top corners, and others trailing off the bottom edge. The tan colored vase containing the bouquet is barely in the picture at all. It is however positioned right at the center bottom. as if to anchor the asymmetrical loose arrangement of red, pink, pale green, creamy yellow and light blue flowers. The asymmetry is accentuated by the light and dark green background respectively to the left and the right.

Like the previous floral still lifes here again we immediately sense that this is just a simple bouquet sitting on one of Dusti’s tables, an item that is part of her daily life, nothing ostentatious nor special.

All of Dusti’s early representational works are of this nature. They capture the everyday, the normal things that surround our daily routines and that go almost unnoticed by everyone else. That is, until she makes you pay attention.

I realized after writing this that we have shared this work before. Alas, that is bound to happen after almost five years of weekly art. At the time I wrote: “Notice that the actual flowers are not clearly identifiably, nor does it seem necessary in order to appreciate the work. Rather, the painting captures their color and liveliness.”