White Gardenia and Pine Needles
Oil on canvas
25 x 30 inches, 1948
Rae Solowey once said that every time Ben looked out a window of his studio, he saw a new landscape to paint. He might have said the same thing about still lifes. For most of the 36 years Ben called the farm home, he grew flowers which he used in his painting. He rarely painted any still lifes in the winter with purchased flowers, although he did paint dried flowers from his garden.
When I look at this still life from 1948, I envision an artist anxious to paint his first still life of the season. He took the spring’s earliest bloom, the forsythia, and the ever present (and ever green) pine to make an early spring still life. The gardenia? That alas is cloth imitator, a fake flower that he employed to balance his picture. We still have all the elements of this picture here at the Studio of Ben Solowey. The forsythia, which at one time lined the creek the runs through the property is now down to one large bush. The pine trees that Ben planted still tower over the property. The gardenia, vase, and cloth are all still part of our collection here. Yet it is the sum of these things as transmuted by Ben into a beautiful work that feels as fresh today as any new bloom.
