Featured Artist: Christina Weaver!

*May Rhododendron* by Christina Weaver 20×20″ Oil on Linen

Flowers. I absolutely adore them. Weeds… I’m okay with those as well as long as they bloom 🙂 I ran across an artist who’s work stands out so impeccably. Her dandelion paintings are out of this world good, and you have to be quick to be lucky enough to snap one up. They’re the perfect amount of real and abstract. #gorgeous

Christina Weaver is an artist from North Carolina. I love her subject matter – and no matter what it is, you will be blown away (I’m not kidding!) by her rendition. The intricacy of her paintings boggles the mind. To paint flowers is one thing, to paint a lot of leaves with those flowers AND make it look real is utterly breathtaking!

Don’t take my word for it, check out her paintings (link below) – on Instagram. WOW, Wow, wow! Her paintings have life and light and depth. I could look at them forever!

Just look at the density of May Rhododendron – how each leaf is separate, each petal is its own entity. See the way the light peeks through the bloom of the flower? Pure magic! I love how the distance gets a bit more abstracted. There is a video on her Instagram and I believe it’s a snippet of her painting this very painting. It’s like the most complex puzzle solved little bit by little bit. Pure magic!

See more of Christina’s work via these links:

Website | Instagram

Statement

Flowers and foliage provide rich opportunities for the study of color, shape, form, and light. Painting them “en plein air” is an immersive endeavor that presents its own set of challenges and pleasures. The ever-changing nature of living subjects, represented in their outdoor setting, requires and enables a surrender of control. Fleeting light, transient weather, and moving components confuse the painting process. Collected observations become memories the moment they are depicted, and quick decisions must be made as to what stays and what is sacrificed. The direction of the image is unpredictable, and the painting emerges as a layered document of both subject and experience.

Bio

Christina Weaver (born 1987) grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. She studied painting and drawing at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia and earned a Master of Fine Arts in Painting from Indiana University Bloomington. She has received the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant for artists who work representationally and was awarded the Scheidt Memorial Travel Scholarship in 2011. In 2015 she was a resident artist at Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio, and she has taught drawing and painting in a variety of settings. Her paintings are exhibited nationwide and have been featured in The Artist’s Magazine, Southwest Art, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Sugarlift Gallery will feature her work in the show Beyond Description this fall. Christina lives near Waynesville, North Carolina, in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains.