Prickly Pear Cactus

About the Painting

Donna’s 2020 file gives the painting a second name, La Tuna Nopales. Two open blossoms fill the center of the sheet, their petals painted in coral, orange and red, with small white dots of stamen at their hearts.

Around the flowers, the pads are large flat shapes in green, teal and violet, and their edges are crisp, with one color meeting the next in a clean line. Fine spines cross the pads in thin strokes of gold and pale gray, each drawn with a light touch that gives it a sharp point. Several closed buds rise along the edge of a pad below the blossoms, and a third flower glows in deep red at the lower right corner.

The background moves from cool blue and violet at the lower left to green and gold above, so the warm blossoms seem lit from within by contrast. Donna leaves patches of bright paper inside the pads, and these pale shapes read as sunlight on the waxy surface of the plant. Small spatters of deep red near the top of the sheet echo the color of the flowers. The lower half of the painting turns to shadow, with pads of deep violet and blue that make the blossoms above them shine all the more. Inside each open flower, the petals shade from pale apricot at the tips to a deeper red at the center, which gives the blossoms their cupped shape.

The prickly pear has been the state plant of Texas since 1995. Tuna is the name for the fruit of the prickly pear, and its pads are sold in grocery stores, fresh or pickled as nopalitos.

On the home page, it is the tall painting on the Meet the Paintings wall, where it spans two rows on a wide screen. Donna signs her name in the lower left corner, in the cool shadow beneath the pads.