Marc Zimmerman "Spain Released" Oil on Canvas, Botanical Abstract Painting in Lime Green and Black, Carmel California Art, Statement Artwork, 2025

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In this botanical abstract oil on canvas by Carmel-by-the-Sea artist Marc Zimmerman, lime, olive, black and aqua leaves overlap into … Read more In this botanical abstract oil on canvas by Carmel-by-the-Sea artist Marc Zimmerman, lime, olive, black and aqua leaves overlap into a loose rosette on a pale gray-white ground, as if a plant has just been released from its vase and opened out. Thin white lines trace the veins through the black shapes, and a single flare of red at the center keeps the eye moving. A rust-orange curl at the left and a sky-blue edge at the top tilt the composition slightly. The shapes are flat and cleanly outlined, a habit from Zimmerman's woodcut years, and the paint sits smoothly, with the white of the ground left open around them. The result is light, graphic and a little playful.

A 36-inch square gives it presence above a sofa, a bed or a long console. The lime, black and aqua look fresh against white or pale gray walls, and they sit well with natural oak, black metal and soft linen. It is a good choice for a bright modern room that needs a graphic, botanical focal point, in an entry, a dining room or a bedroom.

Oil on canvas, 36 x 36 x 1.5 in (91.4 x 91.4 x 3.8 cm).

Marc Zimmerman paints in oil on stretched canvas, building his scenes from flat, clearly outlined shapes of saturated color. Years of woodcut printmaking gave him crisp edges, simplified forms and a feeling for texture, while Henri Rousseau and Paul Gauguin shaped his lush botanical worlds, and painting trips to Kauai fed his Jungle series. Self-taught in oil since 1989, he lets a harmony of related colors carry each composition, then adds one unexpected accent.

Marc Zimmerman is a painter and ceramic sculptor based in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. He began as a potter, working at the Pot Shop, a studio pottery in Venice Beach, from the mid-1960s, then studied watercolor in Southern California and woodcut printing in Santa Barbara before teaching himself oil painting in 1989.

He ran his own painting gallery in Carmel from 1997 to 2002 and was given a retrospective of his oils at the Pacific Grove Art Center in 2012. His Jungle series grew from painting trips to Kauai, with Rousseau and Gauguin as early guides. After forty years of painting he returned to clay with his Garden Totems, hand-built, stacked and glazed one element at a time, often without a sketch. See less