Welcome to Hollyhocks in Bloom.

This site was created in memory of my Dear Aunt Mary who passed away in August of 2010. She was a wonderful and saintly woman whom I loved dearly. You see, to me she was an inspiration. I’ve always had the belief that you can do anything you desire, all it takes is a little study, effort, and dedication. My Dear Aunt Mary embodied these attributes and more and she instilled these in me. She also rescued me and changed my life as a young boy. My own mother (her sister) used to tell me that when I was born My Aunt Mary wanted to take me away and raise me as her own. When I was about 13, I think she got her wish. She took me and my mother in for a few months when we moved from the small town we grew up in to Indianapolis. From that time on she became my second mom and I grew up at her house in the country a few miles north of Indianapolis. I spent my summers and many, many weekends at her house. She would drive down to Indianapolis nearly every week, pick me up, and take me home with her for the weekend. It seemed like I was there almost every weekend during the schooht up on all my homework and didn’t have any tests just so I could stay at her house one more day. Of col year and occasionally those weekends extended into 3 day weekends. I would tell her that I was caugurse she would let me. We did many things together, we worked in her flower beds, the garden, the orchard, and painted her house or the barn often. Whenever she got the whim to change a room’s color or put up some chair rail we’d make a trip to the paint store.

Throughout the years she took art classes at the Indianapolis Museum of Art with one of her dear friends. They would get up early and make the drive to Indianapolis, always traveling the back roads because my Aunt Mary didn’t like to drive on the interstate highways. When she would get home, we’d sit at the table in the kitchen eating lunch and talking about what she drew or painted and we’d watch the birds on the feeders out the back window. She loved watching the birds and every once in a while we’d have a great treat by a visiting rare bird to one of the many feeders we had hanging in the crabapple trees beyond her patio. She loved to paint things in nature, flowers, landscapes, birds, and various pets of family and friends.

This painting, “Hollyhocks in Bloom”, is my favorite painting of all the ones that she had composed. It is, in my humble opinion, a great work of botanical art and is the best and richest painting that she created. She has many other paintings and drawings but I’ve always felt that this was her best. I always asked her if I could buy it from her and several years before her death she finally let me have it. I immediately took it to a framing store and had a beautiful frame made for it and hung it prominently in my living room. It was almost destroyed in a fire after our home was stuck by lightning a few years ago. The living room where this painting hung caught fire. Luckily, the fire was stopped from spreading throughout the house, but we had a lot of smoke damage throughout the entire house. Luckily, we had done something that we were told not to do when we framed it. We had a glass front put on the frame to help protect it. This protected the painting from the black soot that covered the living room. However, the frame was damaged beyond repair and the painting did have a smokey smell.

We had the painting painstakingly cleaned but the original frame was damaged so we had another even more exquisite frame made for it, which is what you see above. Of course, we had a glass front put on the frame again to protect the painting. I know this is not the best thing for a painting but we had some special vents put in the frame and backing to help ventilate it. This painting of Hollyhocks in Bloom comes from a picture of the Hollyhocks that grew next to the large vegetable garden that she and I toiled in for many years. We grew all sorts of fruits and vegetables, potatoes, green beans, peas, cucumbers, strawberries, raspberries, asparagus, cabbage, lettuce, carrots, beets, and good ol’ Indiana corn and tomatoes. All along one side of the fence between the orchard and the garden was this enormous patch of hollyhocks and snap peas. The bees that constantly buzzed around made it difficult, if not a little dangerous to work in that garden and orchard all summer long. But the flowers that bloomed all summer were beautiful, as you can see by the image above. The flowers and long stems of the hollyhocks swayed back and forth in the hot breeze. There were pink and reds, maroons and purples, whites and two-colored flowers everywhere and the sweet scent of the snap peas gave the hot, humid days of summer in that garden a wonderful backdrop.

My Dear Aunt Mary, loved to paint and draw and she loved the artistry that nature provided. My grandfather was very artistic and he instilled that artistry in her. She passed that love of art and nature to me. Even when painting a room, there was a certain technique that I learned from her to make it look perfect. We often discussed her paintings and what we liked about them. I preferred the very detailed paintings and she preferred the impressionist paintings. This painting is an impressionistic work but has the details in it that make it bloom right off the canvas before your eyes. The flowers, buds and stems in the foreground show the details that I love, the beautiful color variations and curled edges that hollyhocks are known for and the impressionistic depth of the flower bed in the background immerses you in floral delight. The contrast and depth of color is so vivid and crisp that it makes you feel as if you could reach out and touch these flowers or hear the bees buzzing around. As you may know, hollyhock blooms are very large flowers, and their colors are quite varied and vivid. This painting captures those life-sized aspects. The central flower in this painting is true to life-size on the original 24” x 36” painting, this, the various states of the buds and blooms, and the depth of field makes this painting even more unique. I have searched for prints, pictures, and paintings all over and have never found anything as beautiful, colorful, or detailed as this painting.

So why did I create the website? My Dear Aunt Mary had a great love of Jesus Christ and the Holy Catholic Church. She had a very strong faith in God and all his works. She loved the artistic works that God provided for us through nature. She had a strong belief in the goodness of Catholic Charities and was very charitable herself. I wanted to continue this charity in her honor. I also wanted to create a living legacy of her and share her good works with others. I want to inspire others to see that anyone, even a very simple person, can accomplish anything and create beautiful works of art. All it takes is to slow down, stop, look around and observe the beauty that nature provides us and to recognize God’s handiwork all around us. There is beauty all around us, in the sky and the trees, in the birds and the bees, in the flowers and their seeds.

Every purchase will benefit Catholic Charities and Catholic Education especially in the arts departments of Catholic Schools. We have dedicated 50% of the proceeds of every purchase to benefit both Catholic Charities and Catholic Education. With that you can purchase this beautiful botanical painting in print in the following sizes and formats. We are offering it on canvas or as poster prints. The canvas art gives this print a more custom look and feel but, either format is of such good quality that makes it frameable. Deep Discounts are available for the 2nd or more of like items.

This painting will look great in any decor, the botanical theme and deep, rich earth-tone colors will blend in any room, from a girls bedroom to your favorite sitting room. Do you have a special friend or family member going through breast cancer treatment? With pink being the "official" color of breast cancer awareness, this painting would make a wonderful gift for anyone going through or in recovery from treatment. What a wonderful way to let someone special know that you are thinking of them and praying for them.

To Place an order, please contact us at:

Hollyhocks in Bloom
P.O. Box 17101
Indianapolis, IN 46217
317-919-7831

Please allow 3 to 4 weeks for delivery of your order.

To be declared a saint one must be credited with at least 3 miracles.

1. It’s a miracle that I turned out to be the person I am today. I would never have made it this far without my Dear Aunt Mary’s guidance, care and inspiration.
2. Through your purchase, others will receive the miracle of education and the beauty of art.
3. Through your prayers my Dear Aunt Mary will provide comfort, solace and guidance for you just as she did for me.