October / November 2009

Twelve years ago, Carol Baum constructed a small black box, which she filled with star charts, clipped from The New York Times, and dried flowers fallen from a hibiscus plant. She had clipped the charts hoping to learn the different constellations. She had saved the dried hibiscus hoping to remember a former bush left behind in Santa Monica.

How the flowers and constellations initiated an idea for a painting series is more or less a mystery. Baum has titled this painting series Ali Vows, which consist of twenty-six works in oil and watercolor. Each painting takes place in a particular month. In a style Baum calls expressionist landscape, she paints the flowers that grow in her garden in that month and adds the corresponding constellation of stars seen in the night sky.

Take All Bonds, a painting of May in which azaleas, lilacs, tulips, and iris are in bloom. Baum paints loose shapes giving the outlines of the flowers. In the watercolor versions, the colors are pastels: purple, yellow, and pink. Baum applies paint lightly, in thin, transparent layers. Then she applies the final layer, the black dots that represent the stars cresting the sky, which she creates by using her newspaper clippings.

In all Obligations, Baum focuses on the month of August. Baum paints zinnias, sedum, and hydrangeas. Here the flowers are more compact, except for the hydrangeas, submerged in a background layer. The colors for this month are more fall-like: orange, periwinkle, off-white, salmon, and red.

When using oil paints, Baum's colors burst onto the canvas, contrasting the fragility of the watercolors. The oil paintings in overall size are larger. The images are more vibrant and forceful than their counterparts. On some oil paintings, Baum adds drips from the flowers. The vertical lines of paint add texture and complexity, pleasing to both the eye and mind.

The titles of the paintings neither describe the paintings nor allude to hidden messages. They come from the painter's personal prayers, but are left open to varying interpretations and ways of seeing the universe.

—Debbie Hagan