Passion Flower

A few years ago we planted a Passion Flower vine to cover the terrace railing and it just took over the whole front of the house, it was beautiful! And then... a handyman that was fixing some odd ends around the house decided to trim it back a bit; our poor vine was dead within a couple of months. Dad was upset because the vine reminded him of the vine in his childhood home in Yepocapa (yeah, I dare you to say that 3 times in a row!), Mom was mad because 1 "nobody" trims her flowers and 2 the great ecosystem for all the butterflies and hummingbirds that visited us came to an end, and I just hated seeing the bare railings exposed without all the wonderful greenery. We finally got another vine going last year, and although this one has not taken over like its predecessor it has began blooming and this is one of its wonderful flowers. I found some interesting facts in Wikipedia about the Passion Flower, here are some of them:

• In the 15th and 16th century Spanish missionaries adopted the symbols of the plant as parallels to Christ's last days on Earth, so the word "passion" refers to the Passion of Jesus Christ.
• All flowers have 10 petals that represent the apostles (minus Judas Iscariot and St. Peter)
• The 3 stigmate represent the 3 nails used in hands and feet.
• The 5 anthers represent the 5 wounds (2 hands, 2 feet, and the lance wound in the ribcage)
  
• The filaments represent the crown of thorns.

I worked on another mixed media painting the last couple of weeks and I just ended this one today; it's painted on a 10"x10" canvasboard, with layers of book pages, gesso, acrylics, white ink, black ink, and metallic acrylic paint. The passion flower is all done with Acrylics, the photo is awful because the day has been too cold and there's just not enough light for a good pic. This one is going into my Etsy as well.


Here's a link to the Wikipedia page if you wish to read more on the Passion Flower.