Painting Pictures

A few weeks back I tackled the job of creating an artpiece for the 13’x4′ space above/behind the master bed.  I had lightbox on my brain but after three days of picking through a thousand photographic images to no closure,  I opted to mural instead.

While a friend kindly referred to me as a painter,  I felt obliged to correct her:  I am not a painter, I am a monkey.  I have enough of an eye, understanding of colour, and rudimentary form to imitate the art styles of others, but I don’t possess a distinct painting or drawing style of my own.  And this lack of originality causes me distress.  I can riff on a work and fiddle with the palette, but I remain in the purgatory of imitation.  Emerging art students are frequently told to dig into the masters to improve their techniques, and I work to convince myself that this is what I am doing.  Patience, my girl, patience.

My hands-down choice for project inspiration was Angie Lewin (thank you!), a superb printmaker/painter/designer out of the UK.  She works her stylized botanicals in a lively, slightly retro, palette.  Her painted world reflects the four seasons from the perspective of the woods, field, and shoreline plants.  I wanted a late fall, boreal forest feel, so I chose Birches Ballindalloch as the model, and I’m eyeing her Hedgerow fabric to make cushion throws.  I hope it won’t be long before I can collect her prints, too.  Sigh.

I took up my brushes knowing that if the mural turned out poorly I could paint right over it.  Happy to say, I didn’t have to.