A Passion for Peonies

American Artist 

March 25, 2001

Ohio artist David Herzig likens peonies, "with their sensuality and heavy fragrance," to voluptuous women.  This comparison only begins to explain the artist's love affair with the flower he's been painting for more than a decade.  Although it's clearly his favorite, he doesn't commit himself only to the peony.  Herzig's works are resplendent with tulips, irises, lilies, rhododendron, apple blossoms, and any other petaled pretty that captures his gaze.  He is continually fascinated with his subject, which for him invokes important childhood memories, a connectedness to the natural world, and even a kind of transcendence.

During warmer months, the artist can usually be found jumping in and out of bushes at one of three places (the local arboretum, botanical gardens, or his own backyard) studying the foliage and looking for a unique angle.  At times he even stands in the center of a bush to achieve a fresh perspective.  "I try to set the stage by taking an unusual viewpoint," he explains; "one that creates a sense of drama and heightens the viewer's awareness of the flower's presence."  He uses a surprising composition, strong design, or dramatic lighting to capture the viewer's attention.

Numerous field studies become the basis for his over-sized works.  "I do field studies as reference material for use in the dead of winter," he says, "when I have forgotten the intense color of a rubrum lily or the shape of a delphinium leaf." Herzig sets up shop with little more than a folding table, chair, and umbrella to shade his work.  These small watercolors, which he completes on 300-lb Arches paper, often become finished paintings ranging in size from 7" x 8" to 22" x 30".  "I don't do much sketching on the paper before I begin a painting -- just a line here and there for spatial arrangement and to make sure I get everything where I want it," he notes.  Although he prefers to work from life, the artist sometimes uses photographs as compositional aids.

Working exclusively in transparent watercolor, Herzig believes the addition of pastels, inks, and opaque white compromises the integrity of the medium.  Using a limited palette, he applies numerous layers to each work and can spend up to 20 hours on a single piece.  "I love the push and pull of the work," he says.  "What I'm doing is my way of working in sculpture, molding the forms of the flowers."

This sense of three-dimensionality is a distinctive quality in Herzig's work.  In Peony Garden, the artist developed the effect by first getting down on the ground at eye level with the blossoms.  "I wanted to immerse myself in the color and fragrance of the peony garden," he explains. In designing the composition, Herzig allowed certain parts of the plant to float out of the picture plane, which invites the viewer into the form's three-dimensional presence.  The addition of red also helped to establish the composition and mold the forms with a greater sense of depth.  "I used it not only to frame the focal point but also to literally point the viewer to it," the artist says.

Despite his intimacy with his subject matter, Herzig began painting flowers relatively recently.  "My interest in the garden as a painting subject crept up on me slowly and by surprise," he says.  In fact, he had no real interest in gardens until he and his wife purchased their first house.  Until that point, he had only really known two particular flowers: the peony that his father mowed over every year when the bush simply got in the way of cutting the grass and the water lily that he paddled by on the Michigan lakes he visited in the summer.  The discovery of a peony bush on his new property conjured memories from his childhood and inspired him to "paint these images as though I had known them all my life," he says.  "I also began to reflect on just how much of an impact these two flowers must have had on me.

"The flower as a subject for serious exploration is often overlooked with barely a passing glance," continues Herzig, who finds it to be an inexhaustible source of inspiration, "pregnant with power and meaning."  He believes the challenge of the artist is to cause the viewer to see more clearly.  "I attempt to make my subject new again, as though it is being seen for the first time," the artist describes.  "My subject is especially challenging because we are inundated with floral imagery of every kind, executed with varying degrees of skill, and splashed on everything from teacups to lawn furniture.  We use flowers for decoration rather than seeing them for the expressive forms that they are."

Clearly, his attraction goes deeper than a passing infatuation.  "My friends and family will sometimes say, 'Not another flower!'  But I tell them to leave me alone -- I'm having a ball!" the artist says.  After painting flowers for 10 years, Herzig is inspired by them now more than ever.  "How can you exhaust yourself on plant material?" he asks. "You can't.  There's no end to the subject.  For me, the flower form is worthy of center stage."  And so it is.  Under his Rubenesque touch, even the common peony stirs our passions.

Jeanette Wenig Drake is a writer, artist, and assistant professor of communication at the University of Findlay in Ohio.