Above the sofa, is my first large canvas - 4 feet long - and my first abstract mixed media piece. I painted it "on commission"...my daughter Hannah asked me to paint a large abstract for her as a housewarming gift. This is it, hanging in her new living room. (if you click on the image above, you can see it, slightly enlarged...)
I was pleasantly surprised with how it turned out. I was also surprised at how difficult it was, yet at the same time, how fun it was to paint!
You can't see it, but I embedded an antique key onto the canvas...a gift from my neighbor Earl. I also stamped all the special dates that the McConnell household has experienced in its short history...their wedding day, Timothy's birthday, and the day they closed on this, their first house. You'd find them, hidden all around the canvas, if you could see it up close and in person. You'd also see vintage and antique book, hymnal, and wallpaper scraps in the background, giving this painting beautiful depth and texture. Heavy-bodied acrylics in shades of salmon, coral, orange, navy blue, turquoise, yellow, and slate gray were used, along with inks of black and yellow ochre.
I finished it off with daubs of white plaster, applied randomly with a palette knife.
Cannot wait to paint another, for my own living room, in calm, cool shades of orchid, eggplant, gray, misty blue, and putty colors....very Restoration Hardware.
As I renest, I have arrived at a very precise description of my personal style...I love Swedish/Gustavian flavors, but those words are too wide...too sweeping. I have long thought of how to describe the design I am going for - the quirky house-beauty
I see in my addled imagination.
Instead of merely "Swedish-Belgian-Gustavian" or "French Country", my style is precisely this: think Restoration Hardware meets Granny Chic.
I know. It has never been done. Y'all watch this...
...I am about to do it. I promise, over the upcoming months, to share photos. Leave it to me to pioneer a whole, new design aesthetic.
Now to give it a name...
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