Essence of Life

I dedicate this painting and Wisdom of Age to my Grandpa who passed away on the 15th October 2013.... more

by David Winson

Title

Essence of Life

Artist

David Winson

Medium

Painting - Digital Painting

Description

I dedicate this painting and "Wisdom of Age" to my Grandpa who passed away on the 15th October 2013.

After painting "Floral Beauty", I couldn't stop painting a few more flower paintings and leaf paintings. And this is one of them. I'm no expert on anything like philosophy and this is only the description of this painting. And bear with my poor English and very awkward description :D

In this painting, I tried to compare the three physical stages of our lives to the three stages of leaves. The three stages of our lives are the developing stage (from birth to 20 yrs old), the essence or mature stage (from 21 to 65 yrs old) and the weakening stage (from 66 to death). In the first part of our lives, our abilities, especially physical ones, keep increasing. In the second, our abilities are at the apex relative to the other 2 parts. In the third part, our abilities keep decreasing. I don't think everything decreases in the third part of our lives. There are things or qualities which increase as we grow old. I mean qualities like wisdom and experience (see Wisdom of Age).

Just like in "Floral Beauty", the shapes are imaginary and I used four major colors, green, yellow, brown and black. What if I didn't use the leaf shapes? The colors wouldn't have any meaning at all. The leaf shapes suggest the order
1. green/new
2. yellow/mature
3. brown/old

I tried to compare like this:
Stages of leaves = stages of our lives
Green in leaves = developing stage of our lives
Yellow in leaves = essence or apex of our lives
Brown in leaves = weakening stage of our lives

I used black as background, green and brown as middle ground and yellow as foreground subjects. According to composition, the foreground color yellow is more important than the other two middle ground colors. Therefore, yellow is the essence of this painting. Literally, the painting stops there. It's about leaves and it says that the middle stage of leaves is the essence or the most important part. That's all. We need a little imagination to see beyond leaves into a more general term "Life." If I called the painting "Essence of Leaves", we wouldn't need the last step (imagination).

If you want to see the print's actual brightness and color, please calibrate your monitor first. And don't forget to leave a comment behind.

Uploaded

October 15th, 2013