Garden Gatherings

by Steve Henderson

Original - Sold

Price

Not Specified

Dimensions

20.000 x 24.000 inches

Title

Garden Gatherings

Artist

Steve Henderson

Medium

Painting - Oil On Linen

Description

Flowers and felines are the gatherings on a perfect spring day.

It’s an odd thing, but cats – at least the ones on our farm – like to be around humans, sort of. While there is a distance maintained between the cat and the human, generally the distance just a few inches beyond reaching the cat to give it a pat, that distance is not so great that the cat is not obviously hanging around the human, and nowhere do we see this more obviously than out in the garden.

Garden Gatherings invites the viewer into the garden on a warm spring day, basket in hand, to gather flowers for the table and bring the outside, inside. While there, we notice the cat hanging around – not meowing or making noise, but rustling through the grass, and always seeming to be rubbing around our knees and ankles. It’s remarkably easy to step on a cat at this stage, which spoils the bucolic effect, but since many of us who love cats have been trained – by the cats themselves – to watch where we put our feet, stepping on the cat is a rarity.

But sometimes, we get tired of being cautious and we, like the little girl in Garden Gatherings, swoop the cat up into our arms and out of harm’s way. Of course the cat doesn’t like this and struggles to get out of our arms, and we find ourselves in the position of holding the basket, the flowers, and the struggling cat, unwilling to let any of them go.

It takes concentration, finesse, and grace on our part to keep the cat in our arms without being scratched, and for the moment we, like the girl in the painting, are focused on this project. Our feline gathering, though reluctant to stay, is a treasure we are unwilling to let go.

(Garden gatherings is painted in an area called Baileysburg, in Eastern Washington of the US Pacific Northwest.)

Featured on 27 Fine Art America groups.

First place winner in the Fine Art America Cat Lovers Contest, March 2019.

Uploaded

March 29th, 2017

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