24 November, 2025 0 comments Leave a comment

When I created this charming watercolour scene last July in our Airstream trailer, I loved the peaceful feeling the artwork conveyed.

While I have made over 400 paintings about rocks, this was my first one with a dragonfly. It was pure joy to recreate the body markings and delicate wings of this exquisite creature.

At the time, I had no idea how profoundly this little dragonfly at rest on a pebble beach would touch the hearts of thousands of people I have never met.

First, a little back story:

A Place of Rest, varnished watercolour on 10 x 10 inch panel was inspired by a photo I took in 2019 of a Mosaic Darner dragonfly at L'Anse aux Meadows National Historic site in Newfoundland.

I selected these uniquely striped stones from my vast pebble collection (many of which also came from Newfoundland) to use as painting references.

Then I sketched a still life scene showing the smooth stones nestled together between a few large boulders. One of those boulders became the dragonfly's perch.

In August I introduced this painting along with several more in my Studio Newsletter. One of my subscribers, a collector of my work in Georgia, USA, moved swiftly and acquired A Place of Rest for her home.

This fall, I entered a digital image of A Place of Rest into the Richeson75 international online art competition and it was accepted as a Finalist. As is my habit, I announced this happy news on Facebook last week, and that is when things got really exciting very quickly.

Here is my Facebook post from November 20:

I am thrilled to announce that my watercolour painting A Place of Rest has been selected as a Finalist in the Richeson75 Animals, Birds, and Wildlife 2025 annual international competition.
Typically, this prestigious event attracts submissions from 3,500 artists in over 70 countries, so it is an incredible honour to see my little painting from Canada be accepted by the jury.
The 75 Finalists and Winners paintings are on permanent display online at
https://richeson75.com/pages/wildlife/2025/index.html There are some awesome pieces here so do check them out!
A Place of Rest (varnished watercolour on 10 x 10 inch panel) now resides in the home of one of my collectors in Georgia, USA. She sent me this lovely note: "Your painting arrived. When I opened it, my husband said "wow, that's amazing!" You have a gift for watercolor realism I haven't seen from any other artist. Thanks so much - you can rest assured your work will be well appreciated in its new home."
www.karenrichardson.ca

I was not prepared for, and cannot explain, the avalanche of good wishes that came my way in response to this post. Shown below are Facebook's audience engagement stats as of November 24.

Including two Facebook group sites where I shared my post, it has been viewed over 100,000 times, reached over 70,000 people, and attracted over 5,000 interactions including almost 1,000 comments. I have never had a post receive this much attention in all the years I have been on Facebook.

In the midst of all this excitement, several people asked if they could order prints of my dragonfly painting, so I got to work on that right away.

I am happy to report, A Place of Rest is now available as art prints from my online publisher Fine Art America. (Just in time for their upcoming Black Friday Sale!)

Prints of this dragonfly painting can be ordered on your choice of substrates (paper, canvas, metal, acrylic, wood, or fabric) in sizes ranging from 8 x 8 inches to 36 x 36 inches. Fine Art America will create a custom archival print to your specifications and ship directly to you from their closest manufacturing facility. Shown here is an example of a framed paper print. Check out my entire collection of art prints here.

And that is the remarkable tale of how my little dragonfly went viral.

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