Irises

Irises send me dreaming: their dramatic shape and delicate, almost citrusy scent; I love the blue-almost-purple ones best. I had fresh purple irises on my wedding cake and in my bridal bouquet.

As evidenced by my homepage here, Vincent Van Gogh is one of my favorite artists (along with Andrew Wyeth—but that's another blog entry unto itself!) And serendipitously, those two favorites have a happy union in Irises, painted in 1889.


What I love about this painting is that it is not only visually exquisite, but also offers great scope for interpretation, though some art critics claim that Van Gogh painted it from life, with no intentional representation of greater meaning. At the risk of waxing existential (or reading too much into something that was never intended to be so deep) for me it illustrates the beauty of being oneself, standing out unabashedly, especially against a milieu of uniformity. That, and the colors make me feel alive, just by looking at it!