Marc Zimmerman "Big Lavender" Oil on Canvas, Large Botanical Flower Painting in Periwinkle, Carmel California Art, Original 60 X 60 Inches, 2025

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One periwinkle bloom, about half the width of the canvas, opens at the upper left around a center of golden … Read more One periwinkle bloom, about half the width of the canvas, opens at the upper left around a center of golden beads, its petals brushed in long strokes that fade from violet to chalk white. Beside it a plum bud unfolds a ruffle of pink, and below, teal leaves veined in olive spill over deep blue and maroon shapes, with a small navy bud tucked into the fold of one leaf. The ground is a soft butter yellow that lets the cool colors glow. Edges stay clear and forms simple, so the scale reads at once, and a slight roughness remains where the brush dragged.

At five feet square it defines a room. Over a long sofa, a king bed or a dining console, the violet and teal pick up navy and sage textiles, while the pale yellow ground brightens a gray or white wall. Pale oak, rattan and brushed brass sit well alongside it, and in a high-ceilinged living room it holds its own against large windows.

Oil on canvas, 60 x 60 x 1.5 in (152.4 x 152.4 x 3.8 cm).

Marc Zimmerman paints in oil on stretched canvas, building his scenes from flat, clearly outlined shapes of saturated color. Years of woodcut printmaking gave him crisp edges, simplified forms and a feeling for texture, while Henri Rousseau and Paul Gauguin shaped his lush botanical worlds, and painting trips to Kauai fed his Jungle series. Self-taught in oil since 1989, he lets a harmony of related colors carry each composition, then adds one unexpected accent.

Marc Zimmerman is a painter and ceramic sculptor based in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. He began as a potter, working at the Pot Shop, a studio pottery in Venice Beach, from the mid-1960s, then studied watercolor in Southern California and woodcut printing in Santa Barbara before teaching himself oil painting in 1989.

He ran his own painting gallery in Carmel from 1997 to 2002 and was given a retrospective of his oils at the Pacific Grove Art Center in 2012. His Jungle series grew from painting trips to Kauai, with Rousseau and Gauguin as early guides. After forty years of painting he returned to clay with his Garden Totems, hand-built, stacked and glazed one element at a time, often without a sketch. See less