Winter Blush * Red Tulips

Winter Blush, 12x9, oil on canvas, SOLD

I have that bittersweet thing happening.  The gallery emails me and says, "We sold two of your paintings!"  "Really?" I'm thinking.  And " Are you sure they're MY paintings??".

I really liked those paintings but then if I didn't like them I wouldn't have taken them to the gallery.  I would have thrown them in the growing pile of used canvases with undetermined futures - reground or burn up?  But I DID like those paintings and decided that if they didn't sell I would hang them in my guest room which is done in an heirloomy kind of decor in, believe it or not, red and green.  That is,  red grommet top curtains and one wall painted chartreuse.  

On the flip side, they did sell.  This one and Tulips and Cherries.  So I will do what I've been doing and redesign an new painting for that room.  It seems to be my ace in the hole as far as artwork goes.  When I do a painting for me, in my house, a specific room, a certain wall, I am freed up to loosen up.  Experiment a little - but I want to love looking at it.  And it cant be too cliche but it also cant be too off the wall, figuratively speaking.    :)    But when I do a painting for ME, and not just "to do a painting, ANY painting"  it has a better flow.  It takes on a little bit of my persona.  A little Lori Twiggs flattened onto the canvas.  Who knew that someone else would want some Flattened Lori Twiggs on their walls?  

So it is what it is.  Someone has spent their hard earned cash to hang some FLT on their walls and we are both better off for it.  Me, because it frees up that space for me to design a new piece and them because, well, hopefully they know that the artist behind the painting speaks the same language as they do.  We communicate in color, brush strokes and atmosphere.  We aren't looking for bold splashes of chroma or safe lighting in compositions.  We respect dark corners and lost edges.  We don't need all the information spelled out for us.  In fact we appreciate a little mystery and the opportunity to decode missing pieces.  We might be the minority but we are a community.  Like it or not, we like what we like.  

My paintings were once coined "Melancholy".  Hey, I'm okay with that.  I went through a spell of melancholy (rather in and out of melancholy) for about a decade so if that translated onto my canvas then more power to me.  I don't think I'm in that same space now but I do consider my pieces quiet and restful -ish..mostly.  No noise here.  

So bittersweet but mostly sweet.  I have a new idea for that wall now but I don't have the right props yet.  Sometimes the planning is half the fun.  :)