Georgia O’Keefe was my inspiration when I began drawing with pastels. Her work with flowers always reminded me of landscapes, the way that she appeared to be depicting mountain ranges and valleys — rather than petals and stamens. I drew this piece with Prismacolor nuPastel. The edges of nuPastel are sharp enough to draw fine lines that allowed me to define the petal edges and to work in shadowing in the veins of the petals.
This work I dedicated to a dear friend who died of breast cancer in 2003. She loved irises, she called them her “Rainbow Goddesses.”
