Blog / 2025 / Dandelion
April 8, 2025
When the call for artists for Princeton Public Library’s Our Natural World in 8 x 8 went out, the Liar-in-Chief had just taken over again, and my creativity had gone numb, overwhelmed by the daily horrors of a burgeoning dictator. During that time, immersing myself in the beautiful words of poets long dead—writers who’d seen the US at some pretty low points—helped me, as did using some of my old art as an inspiration for this painting. I credit this dandelion piece with pushing me out of a deadening depression into a deep sadness that still allows me to function.
For more about the public domain and why more artists might want to think about contributing to it, check out this free book about making money from your art without copyright. You can see Children of Spring in person now through April 17th during the Downtown Gallery Crawl.
Princeton Public Library
65 Witherspoon
Princeton, NJ 08542
Hours: every day, visit PPL site for times
The original artwork is available for $250, plus shipping (and tax if you live in New Jersey)—contact me to purchase. You can buy prints and pretty things of the image here in my print shop.
Children of Spring
2025
acrylic on paper
8 x 8 inches
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Growing up, I called myself Gwenndelion. It was a play on Gwendolyn, which lots of people assumed was my given name, and it was a nod to the unsung hero among flowers: the dandelion. I’ve always loved these weeds. Adaptable and resilient, they bring color even to the bleakest spaces, pushing their way up through every crack in the asphalt.
Here, I’m painting dandelions to go with a poem by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, because one of my favorite libraries, the Princeton Public Library, is having an exhibit of poetry and visual art, for which artists find a poem from the public domain—that is a poem that doesn’t fall under anyone’s copyright anymore—and make art about it.
The poem I chose is “Dandelions” by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, a poet, fiction writer, and journalist from the 1800s who was the child of freed slaves and an abolitionist as well as a suffragist.
The poem is an ode to these underappreciated flowers. It goes like this:
Welcome children of the Spring,
In your garbs of green and gold,
Lifting up your sun-crowned heads
On the verdant plain and wold.
As a bright and joyous troop
From the breast of earth ye came
Fair and lovely are your cheeks,
With sun-kisses all aflame.
In the dusty streets and lanes,
Where the lowly children play,
There as gentle friends ye smile,
Making brighter life’s highway
Dewdrops and the morning sun,
Weave your garments fair and bright,
And we welcome you to-day
As the children of the light.
Children of the earth and sun.
We are slow to understand
All the richness of the gifts
Flowing from our Father’s hand.
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