Spring Thaw
March 21, 2021
Around here in British Columbia’s Southern Interior, while the mountains boast of a more than normal snow pack (which ultimately brings water to our homes), our city of Kamloops has experienced a warmer and drier Winter than usual. While there’s still a little snow in the higher portions of the city, where we live it has been a very gentle and lamb-like entry into the first day of Spring.
by Lance Weisser
Peace
April 12, 2020
A bouquet of Peace roses on Easter Sunday, offering up peace of heart and mind during these uncertain times of isolation ….
watercolour, 7.5″ x 10″, Arches #140 Cold Press Paper
by Lance Weisser
SOLD
The Peace Rose was developed/cultivated from a seed the size of a pinhead in Lyon in 1935 by the French commercial rose-growing family, the Meilland’s, and introduced simply as ‘3-35-40’. Attracting much attention for its beauty at a rose convention in 1939, France was invaded by Hitler and the Meilland properties seized and used for food production.
In desperation, the Meilland’s smuggled ‘3-35-40’ out of France in a diplomatic satchel to The United States, where, in 1940, it was submitted to The All-America Rose Selections (AARS) for a three year testing. Based on the success of this testing, a launch date of April 29, 1945, was chosen to coincide with the Pacific Rose Society Annual Exhibition in Pasadena, California.
‘3-35-40’ still did not have a real name. Then, April 29th, 1945, its official launch date, coincided with the fall of Berlin and the declaration of a Europe-wide truce.
At The Pacific Rose Society Annual Exhibition, two doves were released and ‘3-35-40’ was christened by The AARS via this statement:
“We are persuaded that this greatest new rose of our time should be named for the world’s greatest desire: ‘PEACE’.“
The new rose ‘PEACE’ was officially awarded the AARS award on the day that the war in Japan ended, and on May 8, 1945, with the formal surrender of Germany, each of the 49 delegates to the newly created United Nations were presented with a bloom of “Peace”.
“As for the Meillands, whose rose farms and family assets were destroyed by World War II, the commercial success of “Peace” enable the family business to recover and subsequently continue to develop new, beautiful roses. In what might be a moral to a parable Francis Meilland, who died in 1958, wrote in his diary:
‘How strange to think that all these millions of rose bushes sprang from one tiny seed no bigger than the head of a pin, a seed which we might so easily have overlooked, or neglected in a moment of inattention’ . . . “
That lovely time of year…
March 20, 2020
A number of years ago I was commissioned to paint a bird watercolour by two sons for their mother for Christmas. Not that familiar with birds, nor familiar with what their mother preferred, they only said, ‘she really likes them’, and so left it to me to choose.
Even now I somewhat cringe inside for having chosen what I did. And I still can’t quite explain why I did–I just did–though I think it is because baby birds are so vulnerable and almost the epitome of innocence.
However, a baby N. American Robin….
watercolour on Arches 140# Cold Press Paper, 7″ x 5″
by Lance Weisser
SOLD
……is one very ugly little bird, lol.
I never did hear back whether their mother liked it or not, which kind of spoke for itself. But, ugly or not, these little Robins don’t stay that way long as they go about discovering along with us, the joys of new life, renewed warmth, and gardens full of delightful tastes, smells, and colour.
Taste of Spring
April 17, 2018
A painting drawing on a style in keeping with children’s books illustration, this painting was done for my niece and great-niece and nephews. It was done more than ten years ago now, and is of a fictional place that now seems more like Middle Earth than anywhere else.
Taken by a low grade camera through glassed-in frame, I hesitated before posting this….
![Sept2009045[1]ab](https://weisserwatercolours.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/sept202009200451ab.jpg)
‘Fields of Home’, watercolour by Lance Weisser
Arches Hot Press 140 lb paper,
10″ x 16″
collection of R. Jones & Family
Happy Easter
March 29, 2018
As children, we loved writing on eggs with crayon and then colouring them, the smell of vinegar used in setting the dyes filling the kitchen, and our fingers almost permanently stained purple and orange and green–yet we weren’t very keen on then having to eat cold hard-boiled eggs, pretty though they were. Our mother held a big church breakfast at our parsonage home, card tables decorated up, little ‘favour’ cups filled with mints and peanuts, lots of hot chocolate for people returning from sunrise service. And of course, lots of coloured, hard-boiled eggs.
I enjoy painting watercolour on eggs, which receive it quite well, the best eggs being duck eggs whose satin-smooth surface is perfect for watercolour. The eggs then have to be blown out and finally spray-lacquered to protect them.
Christmas tree ornament egg done using the traditional Ukrainian beeswax and dye method.
‘Little Bunny’, watercolour on Saunders Waterford Hot Press Paper, 4″x6″, sold.
‘Arctic Hare’, watercolour, Arches Aquarelle Hot Press Paper, 4″x6″, sold.
A blessed and Happy Easter everyone!
Spring means….bunnies
April 17, 2015
New bird miniatures
April 6, 2015
The image sizes here are approximately 5cm x 8cm (2″ x 3″). I use a pair of rather strong magnifying glasses when working this small–the kind you find on display at pharmacies (around here they’re referred to as ‘cheaters’). So when working on a tiny miniature they are an enormous help, until I turn to go check on something in the kitchen and walk into the wall, lol.
North American Robin (Turdus migratorius)
January 15, 2012
Pushing my cart into the supermarket yesterday I almost ran someone over. I’d jerked my head around to make sure I was seeing correctly–there in the middle of the aisle was a big fat display of this year’s new vegetable and flower seeds!
I mean to tell you, it is -10C, and snowing out there right now like it’s just going to keep on all night, and they want me to start planting seeds?
So okay–in the spirit of all that, raise your glass. Here’s to a touch of Spring . . .
"Juvenile North American Robin"
weisserwatercolours 