"Choose only one master: Nature" - Rembrandt van Rijn(1606 – 1669)

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The Pot Plant

The still fife, painted onto a white primed Belgian linen canvas is composed of soft light greens, whites and pale yellows against a lightly tinted blue background. The painting begins as a drawing of a pot plant with the organic form developed to the point where the abstract forms are predominant. Some traces are visible of an earlier influence of Echaurren Matta although Matta's style and that of Tanguy makes use of invented forms or of the human figure influenced by Picasso's style of the 1940s.

In this painting, the same type of calligraphy, in the sense of drawing onto the canvas and then filling in between the fines, is more firmly based on the forms of nature that are used as a point of departure. The painting began as a watercolour on paper of a begonia plant, unsigned, but circa 1976, rich in red lakes, indian yellows, blues, greens and brown earths. A first version of the painting, later destroyed paid closer attention to the original colours of the watercolour. The second version concentrates on the undulating forms of the stems and the drooping heads of the begonia. The wide flat leaves have been reduced to schematic forms, the absence of warm colours and the resulting grisaille work concentrate the eye on the weaving sinuous fines and shapes. The painting was exhibited in Sydney and in Melbourne, Australia and later in New York..

The title of Moss' painting created amusement among visitors to the Manhattan exhibition as, apparently, the title evoked a different meaning than that in Europe. A case, as a fellow Irishman on an earlier to the United States, Oscar Wilde of two peoples divided by a common language.

Flowers and Trees are available for book illustrations, annual reports, paper and packaging, giftware, related products. You can license them in the following format: Original transparencies in 6 x 6 cm. (2¼ in.) format, high-resolution RGB drum scans on DVD or efficient and quick E-Mail or FTP upload.