Client: Private

Overview

Create three commissioned paintings for an octagonal dining room with two entry ways, and a wall of windows. Two vertical paintings: 56 x 15 inches, and one horizontal painting: 28 x 42 inches, acrylic on cradled birch panel.

Goals

Client has an octagonal dining room where her family’s cool weather meals are enjoyed and wished to bring color and nature into the space. There were two narrow walls flanking an entry way, and a wider wall central to the room in addition to three walls with windows.

Process

We met in her home to discuss her objectives and hopes for this project. We then reviewed my portfolio of existing work to discover which paintings she had the strongest affinity for. She was familiar with the two main themes in my work: richly colored paintings with relief surfaces abstracted from trees, and abstracted rippling water. The decision was to include two tree “portraits” which are vertical format and a horizontal painting of ripples with distorted tree reflections. I made detailed measurements of the dining room, built a scale model, spent time in the local arboretum searching for trees to inspire her paintings, and prepared sketches with various options. As an intermediate stage full size b/w sketches were made and temporarily installed to confirm scale and composition. Over the next few months we communicated by email with jpg progress updates until completion.

Additional Information

Client and her family were a joy to work with. She and her family live in an art filled home and it was a pleasure to be included in her collection.