This here is another painting that is a bit outside of the box for me. It started out as an old painting that was just meh and had been sitting in my painting archives for a few years. I recently did a purge of this archive - made some tactical decisions of what to keep, what to chuck and what to paint over - and thought this one would be a good one to paint over. The bones were good (meaning the substrate) and the colors in the original painting could look cool poking through a new painting. I designed the new image and dove in...
The image of an elephant dangling on the end of a red balloon spawns from the Red Balloon series I've been exploring.. I thought it would be interesting to suspend an elephant from a balloon to see what that would do visually. I do really like tea and tea cups (ask my family.. I have a cup problem..) and also enjoy playing with scale. Suspend an elephant from a balloon over a cup of tea and add a lot of interesting palette knife texture to the background and it turns out you get... Enlightenment!
Well, maybe. Enlightenment is trickier than that... However, I can say that I am pretty excited with the results. I love the texture and as I said, the layers that poke through and the imagery is sufficiently compelling to keep me pondering and continues to pull my attention to observe. And, doing a bit of research into the symbolism of Tea, elephants and balloons, gelling it all together, it turns out that this painting could very well be about a powerful spiritual experience of wisdom, strength and a little bit of luck. I'll take it. But you don't have to. It may just be an elephant floating above a teacup.. Regardless, you will want to scroll down do check out all of the juicy, yummy texture and color..
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| Dreaming of Tea, Oil on panel, 16x20" To purchase, click here |
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