this artisan house #4: a triptych of balloons

Continuing the theme of filling my house (and those of my loved ones) with art and pieces of functional beauty….

January has us thinking about resolutions, promises and time gone by… (which is another blog theme in itself)

I painted these for my mom (who loves balloons) back in the summer of 1997, and I gave them to her for Christmas that year. The landscape is a hay field in upstate Vermont (south of Burlington) the three images represent day, evening and night in the styles of Monet’s Haystacks, Munch’s Shriek and Van Gogh’s Starry Night. There is a glaze effect continuing across the sky in all three pictures, which you can see at certain angles, as well as a screaming face on the appropriate balloon.

She really liked them and wanted to hang them… but they needed framing… (each 14×18 – an impossible size to buy frames for by the way) they sat on the landing, then later in my old room waiting, and collecting dust. Out of sight, out of mind. Occasionally Dad or I intended to frame them in time for her birthday, mothers day, next Christmas, soon… but it never happened. Eventually I snuck them out of their house, intending (seriously this time!) to frame them, only to keep them in my house for a year or two… until I realized that they were coming up on 10 years old!

This Christmas, my mother re-opened these paintings, but with black wooden frames!
As of this writing, they’re still sitting on the landing on the stairs, waiting to be hung… but at least the onus is off of me!

(and yes, that is a belt holding together the lower leg on that antique bench – the tenon broke inside the hole and someday I’ll get around to fixing that properly.)

-- I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso -- http://blanchardcreative.etsy.com -- http://snbcreative.wordpress.com/