An Idyll Day

My mom requested a painting as a surprise present for my dad for their 50th wedding anniversary. She was thinking of something garden-related that would look good above the couch in the living room. The color scheme for the room is gold, beige, and sky blue: the colors of the beach on a perfect summer's day.

All Hages worship sunshine and salt water, no one more so than my dad and his father before him. As my sister said when we were young, "Hages bloom in the summer." If he can't be at the beach, my dad loves to tend his garden, and above all, his roses. As long as I can remember, he has cultivated and pampered hybrid tea roses of all colors. Long after relinquishing the vegetable garden to woodchucks, deer, and the vagaries of New England weather, my dad has fed, mulched, pruned, and gloried in his roses. He even created a fenced-in home for them. It seemed fitting that any painting of flowers should include roses.

Beach at Harkness State Park - Waterford, CT

I decided to create a tranquil seascape with beach roses, capturing the best of both idealized worlds ... garden and ocean. Because it is expensive to ship large canvases, and becuse I wanted to create something that fit the space, I painted a triptych. The outer panels represent mounds of beach roses growing on the dunes. The center panel is the path opening out onto to a pristine beach, inviting the viewer to settle in the warm sand and gaze at the expanse of sea on a crystal clear day. My father's dad used to sigh on days like that and exclaim with contentment, "What an idyll day!" His command of the English language was excellent, but he had a few idiosyncratic mistakes that seemed more perfect than perhaps he even intended (my other favorite was "God punched him" instead of "God punished him.") While the painting portrays an ideal day, it is also an idle day ... one spent lounging on the beach ... and an idyll day ... one spent in an outdoor paradise.