Barbara Gustavson and Ralph Gibbons, May’s featured and guest artist at Bountiful’s Lamplight Gallery, have filled the walls and picture frames with flowers in a wide variety of different shades and styles. Gustavson, the bolder of the two, goes for color, while Gibbons leads gallery-goers through a walking tour of more delicate and organized country gardens.
Gustavson’s pieces take traditional garden flowers, such as daffodils, irises, and tulips, and imbue them with so much rich detail and color that they appear as wild and exotic as tropical blooms.
A close inspection of any one petal can show an entire rainbow of colors, the yellow shading to orange, then pink, then red. Her “Daffodil Study,” contains what seems to be every shade of yellow and orange in existence, all so warm and glowing that it seems to be generating its own light.
Gibbons, on the other hand, offers up an entire garden in each of his pieces. His blossoms are smaller and more refined-looking against their clean white backgrounds, surrounding an English-looking doorway or gathering neatly above the rim of a pot. The tone is very soft, almost soothing, but in its own way is as rewarding as Gustavson’s work.
After all, a flower by any other name still looks just as sweet, too.



