This is a new painting that I finished at the request of a collector in North Carolina. It was an interesting request, one that piqued my imagination enough to accept the commission. He wanted a very specific sized painting built on a hinged frame that would cover an unsightly circuit breaker box located in the middle of a wall in a well used room.
I found the idea that the painting would be part of a utilitarian object, something that had a real practical use, intriguing. But I didn’t want this purpose to outweigh the painting itself. The painting had to be the dominant aspect of the whole, not a mere afterthought or pure decoration.
The client had specific requests that had to be addressed. First of all, it needed too be one size, which ended up being an 18″ wide by 42″ high canvas. This size and proportion would dictate how the painting was composed. He wanted it to be part of the Archaeology series as he had uncovered a number of old items in the ground around the old farmhouse he was renovating. But he didn’t want to not have the below-the-surface area overwhelm the painting, desiring a smaller presence for the assorted items. He liked my blue night skies and moons and red trees that were spindly like the pink mimosas in the yard of the old farmhouse. The two red trees furthest away have touches of pink in them.
The part that I wrestled with the most was having a night skyline in the painting, of which he had expressed an interest. At first, I was hesitant as I had always seen the Archaeology pieces as being beyond the time of man, at a point when we’ve entered the realm of dinosaurs and exist only in the evidence we’ve left behind. The idea of having evidence of man still existing rocked me at first but then I began to think that it might be interesting to see how it would play. After all, we have certainly created a wealth of underground archaeology up to this point. And maybe I was being a little too cynical in assuming that a time would come when we cease to walk the Earth.
After painting in the buildings, which vaguely represent the Asheville skyline especially with the far outline of the mountains behind, I was really pleased. It gave me the feeling of two worlds, two histories, exisiting simultaneously, one above the ground and the other beneath it. One history, the past, is already written and the other is being written in the present. It really seemed to work, filling out a new narrative and giving the piece a different depth.
I began to see that the painting had become one of my own paintings, beyond the desires of the collector, which was exactly what I wanted for it. When people ask about commissions that is the point I try to get across– that I have to satisfy myself, with the painting, have to feel that it has its own life, before I would even consider showing it to them. And this piece does just that. It feels alive and vibrant to me.
Now it can move on to its new life.
Redtree Times 