Honey Bee
2004; oil on canvas; private collection
The story behind this painting is that in 2004 I had been invited to put up a show of my work at the Woodstar Café in Northampton. I had settled upon “a day in the life of a bee” as the guiding theme (and I had entitled the show Place to Bee). The unifying theme gave me an opportunity to explore subject matter such as landscapes from an aerial vantage point, some stylized flowers, and in this case an up-close view of a stylized bee.
I had named the painting Honey Bee, but I have since been advised by a local bee expert that this would be considered anatomically incorrect because of the taper of the abdomen (secretly I already knew this, as evidenced by the unabashedly-abstract swirly pattern I painted in the wing).
