Helen Spurrier "Floral Fantasy" Acrylic and Real Flower Painting (1969)

This beautiful "Floral Fantasy" by Helen Spurrier was literally taken from her gardens in he backyard in Davenport,, Iowa. Mrs. Spurrier developed a technique for preserving and pressing her flowers and then incorporating them into what was then a new technique using acrylic paints and watercolor.

Two paintings (portrait orientation) are side by side with the only marks being thick lines that terminate with a sizeable dot of blue, yellow, or red. The left one has lines vertical/horizontal, and he right one has lines diagonally.
Experimental pictures with "floating"[1] acrylic paint
Acrylic paint is a fast-drying paint made of pigment suspended in acrylic polymer emulsion and plasticizers, silicone oils, defoamers, stabilizers, or metal soaps.[2] Most acrylic paints are water-based, but become water-resistant when dry. Depending on how much the paint is diluted with water, or modified with acrylic gels, mediums, or pastes, the finished acrylic painting can resemble a watercolor, a gouache, or an oil painting, or have its own unique characteristics not attainable with other media.

Water-based acrylic paints are used as latex house paints, as latex is the technical term for a suspension of polymer microparticles in water. Interior latex house paints tend to be a combination of binder (sometimes acrylic, vinyl, pva, and others), filler, pigment, and water. Exterior latex house paints may also be a co-polymer blend, but the best exterior water-based paints are 100% acrylic, because of its elasticity and other factors. Vinyl, however, costs half of what 100% acrylic resins cost, and polyvinyl acetate (PVA) is even cheaper, so paint companies make many different combinations of them to match the market.[3]

Excerpt From Wikipedia:

...Otto Röhm invented acrylic resin, which was quickly transformed into acrylic paint. As early as 1934, the first usable acrylic resin dispersion was developed by German chemical company BASF, which was patented by Rohm and Haas. The synthetic paint was first used in the 1940s, combining some of the properties of oil and watercolor.] Between 1946 and 1949, Leonard Bocour and Sam Golden invented a solution acrylic paint under the brand Magna paint. These were mineral spirit-based paints.

Water-based acrylic paints were subsequently sold as latex house paints.

Soon after the water-based acrylic binders were introduced as house paints, artists and companies alike began to explore the potential of the new binders. Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco were the first ones who experimented with acrylic paint. This is because they were very impressed with the durability of the acrylic paint. Because of this, artists and companies alike began to produce Politic Acrylic Artists' Colors in Mexico in 1953.

According to The Times newspaper, Lancelot Ribeiro pioneered the use of acrylic paints in the UK because of his "increasing impatience" by the 1960s over the time it took for oil paints to dry, as also its "lack of brilliance in its color potential." He took to the new synthetic plastic bases that commercial paints were beginning to use, and soon got help from manufacturers like ICI, Courtaulds and Geigy. The companies supplied him samples of their latest paints in quantities that he was using three decades later, according to the paper. Initially, the firms thought the PVA compounds would not be needed in commercially viable quantities. But they quickly recognised the potential demand and "so Ribeiro became the godfather of generations of artists using acrylics as an alternative to oils."

Acrylic painters can modify the appearance, hardness, flexibility, texture, and other characteristics of the paint surface by using acrylic mediums or simply by adding water. Watercolor and oil painters also use various mediums, but the range of acrylic mediums is much greater. Acrylics have the ability to bond to many different surfaces, and mediums can be used to modify their binding characteristics. Acrylics can be used on paper, canvas, and a range of other materials; however, their use on engineered woods such as medium-density fiberboard can be problematic because of the porous nature of those surfaces. In these cases, it is recommended that the surface first be sealed with an appropriate sealer. The process of sealing acrylic painting is called varnishing and artists use removable varnishes over isolation coat to protect paintings from dust, UV, scratches, etc. This process is similar to varnishing an oil painting.

Helen Spurrier's "Floral Fantasy" measures about 19 inches high and 14 inches wide. It weighs about 4 lbs.