North Texas gardeners have lost countless rose bushes to a killer disease called Rosette. Have you heard of it? There is no known cure and there’s no rose-bush to date that’s resistant to the disease. Well wouldn’t you know it, we found out early this summer that the area we live in the bulls-eye of the disease – yes, our town and the ones surrounding us have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bushes, resident gardeners (us included) have also paid the price. Today roses are only a dream until the researchers find or develop a disease resistant rose . . . today my painting is my wish for a garden filled with roses once again ~
Garden Rose, an oil pastel (8×10) was painted on a gesso-prepared Ampersand Board using Senneliers, Holbeins and Mungyo-Gallery with an acrylic underpainting. I continue my quest to learn how to paint a convincing rose in oil pastels – perhaps later this summer I’ll do a 10 or 15 painting series on just roses. I’ll bet there would be some real challenges, and valuable lessons learned in an exercise like that.
Thanks for stopping by ~
My liberal interpretation of a beautiful rose photograph from Heidi Anderson, an artist and photographer with pmp.
DON’T TAKE MY IMAGES!! MY ART IS COPYRIGHTED.
PLEASE DON’T COPY OR USE THE IMAGE WITHOUT RECEIVING MY PERMISSION FIRST – SEE DISCLOSURE ON THE RIGHT PANEL.
Oil Pastels by Mary 
Gorgeous oil pastel Mary. The Rosette disease sounds horrible. I don’t know if we have it here. I hope not.
Thank you so much Gallivanta – wonderful to see you again. You’re right Rosette is an awful rose disease, it tore right through all our gardens around here.
Oh my gosh this is so absolutely gorgeous! Just love it!
Hi Elizabeth, thanks very much you’ve made my day!
I adore this
Thank you very much! Nice to meet you ~
And the very same of you!
Lovely! You nailed the delicate nature of the rose! Terrific! ~Rita
Thanks Rita!
Gorgeous!
Thanks Bette!
Beautifully delicate, Mary! I hope there will be thousands of roses in your garden soon.
Thank you so much Elena – wish that would be true, but not for a long while.
All the glory of a rose, Mary! I can just catch that whisper of perfume 🙂
Happy weekend to you!
Thank you so much Jo – can’t tell you how much your compliment means to me. Have a lovely weekend.
Mary, this is SO lovely.
Thank you Cynthia!
Beautiful, dear Mary. 🙂
All the best to you!, Aquileana 😀
Thank you Aquileana for your lovely note.
Sigh! All horror aside, your rose is a beauty, truly!
You are so nice! Thanks my friend.
OMG!!!!! I know how awful these plant diseases can be . We have lost almost all of our Elm Trees due to Dutch Elm Disease & now we have this horrid Asian Beetle eating our crops! There’s more, unfortunately.
Global trade is not all it’s cracked up to be!
So sad, right Resa! Who knew that this much damage would be done ~ have a beautiful weekend.
As usual your painting is beautiful, your subtle brush work and fine shading techniques render a perfect rose. Thank you for sharing such beauty with the world!
Thank you for your lovely description – I really appreciate that you studied the piece. Have a wonderful weekend – thanks again!
This is gorgeous, Mary. We have one rose bush that produced roses of this color a few years ago. We also have another one that produces dark pink ones, but has always had some kind of disease, because the leaves are always turning brown. I have photos of both that I want to paint also someday. Have fun with your rose series! 🙂
Thanks so much Patsy – trying to grow roses is a whole story unto itself. Hope that you paint your beautiful roses, would love to see them.
I remember some decades ago asking you to paint a rose and you had said that you were not ready to undertake the challenge. That was then. My patience has been rewarded.
Thanks you Prospero for your encouragement and support in getting a rose painted. Took a while before I just figured it out, have more work to go but I’m happy for finally painting a rose. Very happy that you approve – thank you my friend.
This is a truly lovely tribute to the rose, Mary. I’m sorry to hear the roses are succumbing to disease.
Thank you so much Jet – really appreciate it! Amazing how much damage a microscopic mite can do in spreading a disease like this.
Really delicate layers of colours. This makes me see how oil pastels are often referred to as paintings.
Thank you for your feedback. Yes oil pastels can be layered, all depends on how much tooth you have in the surface and what’s the temp outside (right now it’s so hot the sticks kind of melt in my hands). OPs is a great medium for paintings, it’s is really versatile. Love your work, btw.
What a gorgeous painting!
Thanks so much Fiona – wonderful to see you!
Beautiful painting, Mary! Have a great day!!
Thanks so much Patrick! Hope you have a lovely weekend.
Terrible news on the roses! Great painting!
Thanks Brenda – yes I know the disease has just stripped this area of thousands of beautiful roses! Very sad ~
Fingers crossed they find a cure.
Lovely painting. Awful news
Thanks Derrick! Did you know that David Austin has a very large rose facility here in Tyler, TX? I wonder how they are protecting their roses – we had one of them and lost it last year to the disease.
I didn’t know about David Austin’s presence in Tyler. Such a shame that you lost one
We’ve actually lost 6+ rose bushes and still have another couple to be taken out this year. Yes, Austin has a large facility here – quite popular.
Wow. I really enjoy how you faded the colours from the brightest pink on the tips back into the petals. Also, the shadow work is astounding to me. I couldn’t even draw this, let alone capture all that detail with colours.
Hi A! Thanks so much for your thoughts and feedback on this rose painting. I really enjoyed working the pinks into the petals, thanks for noticing. The shadows were interesting – using cool grays/ultramarine blues gave the scene a bit of compliment to the pinks.
Absolutely beautiful, Mary!
Thanks Jill – glad you enjoyed this one! Have a wonderful week ~
I can almost smell it. Where’s my vase . . . ?
Thank you very much Marcus for your compliment – means a lot! There is something quite special about the fragrance of a rose ~
Such a beautiful painting.
I have not heard of this one…in the land where everyone has roses in their garden. Sadly along with all the other madness in the world today, lots of diseases are being spread…killing trees, shrubs, etc, and on top of that lots of strange insects/mammals are being important illegally which are affecting our own indigenous species….God only know where it will all end.
Anyway back to your painting, it is beautiful, and you have captured the ‘timeless’ gradeur of thje rose. Janet.
Hi Janet, thank you for your lovely comment – nice to meet you (sorry if we have already communicated). Yes the situation has gotten out of had and very sad because something is being lost in the ecological chaos happening all around. Really appreciate your feedback, thank you.
So gorgeous– a definite favorite of mine! I love how this rose is so elegant and soft.
Thank you so much my friend – great to hear from you Mamie. Truly love how you described the rose. Have a wonderful week ahead.
Thank you, Mary! Everything you say always puts a smile on my face. 🙂 I hope you have a wonderful week, too!
Beautiful Rose, Mary. I planted roses for the first time last year and they’ve been blooming all summer. I’d be so disappointed if they got Rosette and didn’t grace my garden with their flowers.
Thanks so much Geralyn – I’ll bet your roses are gorgeous. Perhaps the deep freeze that your area experience kills off the disease – that would be great. Perhaps one day you’ll post some photographs of your roses.
I hadn’t heard about this, but I have lost about 6 roses in the last year and I don’t know why. I still have lots still alive so I’m not sure this disease was the problem. But something sure killed them sadly. 🙂 ❤
Hi Natalie – thanks very much. I don’t know where you live, but you might want to check out the disease and see if any of the characteristics were present with your roses before they went bad.
Say it isn’t so? What is life without a rose in the garden? Your rose painting is so beautiful and it reminds me of Georgia O’Keefe.
Hi Emily, thank you so much for your beautiful thoughts on this piece – wow what a compliment. Can you imagine no roses, very sad to see the empty landscape all around this area – even the hardy ones have disappeared.
My jaw is dropping Mary!! I showed it to Hub and he said, “Are you sure that’s not a photograph?” Your work is unbelievable!!!! 💛💛💛
I know Laura, isn’t she truly amazing?
Honestly, she’s a wonder!
Thank you Laura!
Love to you Emily – thank you my friend, you are so generous.
Whoa you are too much – thank you to you and your husband, it means a lot that you enjoyed the painting. Appreciate your beautiful compliment Laura, hope you have a great creative week ahead!
Thank you Mary, and you please also do the same!
I especially like that you are dealing with a rose not totally closed or totally open. That seems like a challenge, as to layers of that beautiful flower, and you meet the challenge beautifully. So, so sorry to hear about “the plague” on roses in your heart of Texas….
Thank you Cynthia – I thought I’d tackle this half-opened rose for its delicate pose. We had a rose bush, an old english variety with the most beautiful fragrance by David Austin that had 120 petals, can you imagine painting that? Yes, I think the rose will be incredibly complicated to paint, one day maybe ~ ah and this is one of the bushes we lost. Perfect word to describe it “plague” that still hasn’t stopped making it mark across N. TX.
I think this is beautiful. I like just the few petals dropped forward. It does put the viewer in mind of the scent of a rose, depicted in that way. Excellent!
Thanks so much Leslie, love that it brings the thought of rose fragrance – there is something very special about walking by roses and smelling their lingering scent. Really appreciate your beautiful response.
Beautiful, I can smell its scent
Awesome compliment – thanks!! That is what I miss the most about our beautiful roses, the incredible scent ~
Whoa, fantastic!
Thanks Pauline!!
So fresh and lovely, Mary. Beautiful contrast too! 🙂
Thank you so much Marina – thanks for noticing the contrasts, I wanted to give a little pop to the floral. Have a wonderful week my friend, hope you are enjoying a few days of rest.
Beautiful, just beautiful. I can feel the layers of petals.
Thank you Joanne – really appreciate your artistic eye. You are so right, there were lots of layers surprising that the board took so many.
Stunning Garden Rose!
Thanks Martha!! Glad you enjoyed it ~ have a wonderful week ahead.
It’s a beautiful rose, Mary! Very delicate!
I’ve never heard of that disease; so far here in the Midwest roses seem to thrive and bloom as every summer. I hope they find the cure for it soon!
Thanks Sibella – maybe if you are far enough up North the cold winter freezes kill the disease. That would be wonderful, don’t you think?
That might be the case Mary. We get a lot of snow and freezing cold here…. I am not looking forward to the winter AT ALL! 😁
I have not had rose blooms since spring. I thought it had to do with the weather. Love this pink rose painting, Mary. Beautiful rose petals. 🙂
Thanks Amy ~ it’s very sad what has happened around here to all the beautiful bushes.
Stunning! Very convincing rose Mary. I hope they find a solution for the disease. A garden isn’t a garden without a rose bush or ten. XX 🙂
Thanks so much Susan! You are so right, no garden is complete with out the most delicate of them all – looking forward to seeing vibrant and healthy roses again.
Your beautiful rose painting looks so life like, Mary. Sad news about the killer disease. I really hope it passes away very soon. It’s such a tragedy for the gardeners in your area.
It will take several years for the ground to recover from the disease – they recommend not replanting any rose bushes for a couple of years to be sure the disease is gone. Thank you Sylvia!!
We have been lucky not to see the disease here yet, but I appreciate the warning. Just read up on it and will be on the lookout. Not fun. But yours is a beautiful substitute until healthy replacements arrive/thrive. 🙂
Thanks Audrey – several area agriculture schools are working to find a rose hybrid that will be disease resistant, so far no success. The disease is also called “witches broom” – a very top- heavy, thorny group of canes w/barely there roses growing on them. David Austin has a large rose operation not too far from where we live – I wonder how they are doing.
Fine Gardening reported some luck by cutting into the base a little when you remove the first infected stalk. Supposedly the base heals over. Worth an experiment!
Very interesting and something I’m going to investigate a little more. Thanks for the information, I haven’t heard of that technique before – I wonder if the folks around this area have tried the procedure.
How very sad for your area. But your exquisite painting lifts the spirit, Mary.
You’ve made my day Sarah, painting roses totally intimidate me – thank you so much.
I’ve been on holiday these past couple of weeks. Yours is the first post to pop up on my reader and what a lovely treat it is. Just wonderful, Mary. 🙂 Thank you!
So funny Sharon, I was just going through my Reader and thought that I haven’t seen your work in a while!! Thank you for your wonderful comment, rose paintings are truly a work in progress for me.