It’s at this time of the year that my camera roll is chock full of flowers. The peonies on Brunswick, the poppies on Howland, Irises, lilacs, and wisteria. Some flowers are easier to photograph than others. The translucent quality of a poppy’s petals is hard to capture when too much sunlight is pouring through it. All the beautiful detail gets erased by the sun. Irving Penn shot his fragile and exquisite poppy portraits in the natural light of his studio. No photograph of a poppy comes close to his. This painting by Brooklyn-based painter, Shara Hughes captures the wildness and the whimsy of poppies packed together with the early morning light dancing all around in a way that I couldn’t with my camera when I saw a similar scene last week. I was happy to have found this painting, to know it exists, and to know that I can look at it and trace my way back to that morning.