Feb 3, 2014

Big Art

The past few months I have been working on so many fun and different commissioned paintings. One of my favorites was a giant abstract painting for Suzanne, a friend from high school, and her husband Chris, who now both live in Chicago.

Suzanne's living room is gorgeous, classic, and very neutral.  The room has lots of symmetry and clean lines, so Suzanne was looking for something to tie it all together and make a statement.  Another challenge was her extra long couch and huge amount of empty wall space.

After chatting about a few different options, Suzanne went with my suggestion of going with one very large painting.  Since the room is so symmetrical and already broken up by the four couch cushions, and the matching tables, lamps, and chairs flanking the couch, we decided that one one large piece would help tie it all together, whereas two or three smaller paintings hung together might make the room look further segmented.  Here's the plan that we came up with for Suzanne and Chris: 

I made them the fun little "digital sketchbook" page above to help them visualize what we were going for along with the colors, and size, just to give an idea of the desired effect.  Suzanne also referenced one of my Etsy paintings that she especially loved for inspiration, to give me a better idea of the style that she was hoping for.  

The painting, (huge - 48" x 72"), took over an entire wall of our dining room and wouldn't even fit on my large easel, so I worked with it propped against the wall with a drop cloth on the floor.  The piece took me about a month to complete.

Here is the painting in its early stages, with lots of gestural brush strokes and movement.  This laid the foundation for the painting, on top of which I built layers of brush strokes and color.  


A few weeks later, and with many layers of movement and paint built up along the way, we ended up with this painting - playful, bright, and dynamic! 


Here I am holding the painting, proud and ready for delivery. It's HUGE!
Here are photos of the final piece, hung and installed (by Chris!) in their living room. 



I could not be happier with the way that it all turned out, and I cannot thank Suzanne and Chris enough for taking a chance on me and letting me work on this for them.  It was so much fun, and I am so glad that they are happy with it.  I LOVE big paintings! 

P.S. - Want to help me out? Please feel free to share or pin away on Pinterest if you see anything you like! I'm trying to grow my business and would love your help spreading the word :) 

Happy Monday! 



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