My Inspiration for Poppy Flower Paintings

My Love of the Poppy

The poppy is a simple, beautiful flower and one which I believe holds much intrigue, magic and beauty. I love to create poppy flower paintings as this delicate yet tenacious flower means so much to so many people.

The poppy holds immense meaning to me as it is what I named my beautiful daughter. Her creativity and warm, strong spirit has inspired me since her birth.  Her unfolding in the wonderful young woman she is today has been such a joy and blessing in my life. Poppy lives in London, has just graduated from Wimbledon College of Art with a degree in Fine Art, and I couldn’t be more proud of her. Her work can be found at poppycoomber.co.uk

My collection of poppy flower paintings and prints celebrate wild meadows filled with scarlet crimson joy.  I spent much of much childhood in rural south Cork  and have memories of blankets of red joy dancing in golden sunshine and the feelings of wild freedom these delicate flowers represented.

Poppy Flower Paintings

It’s impossible to ignore the poppy’s history and link to remembrance, as well as of the hope it provided during the Great War. When devastation and lifelessness seemed to consume the earth, the beautiful poetic poppy sprung up through the barren earth and provided a symbol of hope, joy and promise. The word ‘sanguine’ befits the powerful poppy in more ways than one. However I perceive poppies ultimately as a celebration of life.  Their brazen redness shouts of daring and the courage to be different. They stand out in nature and fill the soul with happiness.

I travelled extensively in my early twenties and can still recall the awe the meadowlands in the middle east saturated with wildflowers and very particularly poppies.  When my daughter was young  we travelled in a forest green truck and explored Europe. I have many  photographs and small paintings captured in poppy meadows, and these provide much of the inspiration behind my poppy flower paintings today.

Poppies are persistent in their manifestation of beauty in unlikely places; urban roadsides and unkept wastelands.  They sing of possibility, of an easy free and a wild spirit.