Eye to Eye with a dragonfly - Oil on wood

Painting outdoors is lovely. But life is busy, so there isn’t usually time to travel to a wonderful beauty spot. Often, I just take a sketchbook or some paints along with me on my walks from my own front door. On this particular day in late October last year, I didn’t have time to go searching for spectacular views, but I did have a full oil painting kit with me. So I tottered up the road with it all and plonked myself down by a sludgy pond in a clearing in a local wood. Not much happening here but I sat and looked around me in the stubborn certainty that there would be something worth painting. As I stared into the muddy brownish duck weed congested water, sludge green gradually gave way to the reflected Wedgewood blues and soft powdery greens of lichens. More acidic greens of grasses growing upside down and gashes of red and yellow where the reeds had injured themselves and, as the clouds parted to let the sunshine in and I continued to stare into the depths, a deep midnight blue with starry sprinkles.
 
I began to paint. When I’d got a nice sticky layer of colour down on the surfaces I’d bought with me. I became aware of a presence. I was being watched. An electric blue and green dragonfly that had been hovering on the edge of my field of vision darted up and whirled madly round me, curious to know what I was up to sitting in his pond. He zig-zagged and zipped as I tried to focus my eyes on the wonderful alien. His interest in me was obvious, and I, of course, was entranced and mesmerised by him. A human trying to paint a dragonfly on the wing is just plain silly, but it didn’t stop me from having a go. I didn’t manage to get anywhere near the vibrancy of the movements or the electric greens and blues that burred before my eyes, but it was fun trying, and this was a very curious dragonfly.
 
I retuned four days in succession to paint by the sludgy pond, and each time, after half an hour or so, the dragonfly would appear, sometimes hovering in front of my nose so I was scared he would land on his portrait and come to grief. At other times he would hover by my shoulder, casting a critical compound eye over my efforts.   
 
These were magical and mysterious moments. The weather turned colder and my friend had gone, but I continued to work on my series of dragonfly paintings throughout the winter and on into the spring, holding my memory of a special time by that unpromising sludgy pond, and of that strange intelligent life form that was my companion.
 
Rosemary Lawrey
2024
 
The two dragonflies are 60 cm wide x 84 high x 2 cm deep