Charlie has this big beautiful picture frame, that he picked up from some friends house when they moved out of college, and inside it is this really depressing (to me) Winslow Homer print.
The print is of the painting: The Veteran in a New Field, oil on canvas made in 1865. And if you read the summary of the meaning of this painting on this MET page, you can totally agree why having it huge and in my tiny living room is severely depressing to me.
So I decided to grab some canvas, from this huge roll of canvas I still have hidden in the furnace room at my parents house, to match the size of this frame and figured I would paint something new and more friendly to put in my living room. I wasn’t really thinking of any specific subject matter for my new painting, just was sketching some things over a weekend and thought my little tribal-esque elephant sketch looked pretty cute.
The plan is to make a very abstracted background with curves that match the curves of the elephant, on the right-hand side, that curve reminded me of like a piano type thing, something with keys, and I figured I could have that be the area with the brightest white over on that side. Everything else would be deep red, purple and black. Which may not be the most uplifting color palette to use in replace of the Winslow Homer, but in my head it’s gonna look good.
The painting was started in December, it’s been hanging by push pins on my kitchen wall since then… not much progress. I am a procrastinator, but when I do more, I will make an update.
I really want to show the progression of doing this, maybe more than actually having the finished product.