Lily Pond Painting

Lily Pond. Acrylic on stretched canvas. Unframed, hanging hardware installed. Art Deco style. One of the most beautiful parks in Beverly Hills, Greystone Mansion. When I lived close by, it was one of my favorite places to spend a couple of hours on Sundays, get some fresh air saturated with the smell of eucalyptus trees and enjoy the beauty of English garden, paint a small watercolor sketch or just walk around. Later I did some decorative paintings in the Mansion for Interior Designers showcase. I have a few other paintings, mostly sketches in oil and watercolor, but also I painted a couple of big paintings in oil in traditional realistic style. Occasionally I would bring my art students for sketching. With this painting I wanted to experiment and create something different. At that time I was working on commission for the Argentine Tango show, designing backdrop image for projection on the theatre curtains. I made it in Art Deco style. I’ve got a good response from the dancers, my peers, friends and students, so I created more paintings of the same style. That is how I came up with idea to create Art Deco style painting of Greystone Park’s pond. This is a remarkable park with a lot of history. Here is what Wikipedia says about this place: “Greystone Mansion, also known as the Doheny Mansion, is a Tudor Revival mansion on a landscaped estate with distinctive formal English gardens, located in Beverly Hills, California, United States. Architect Gordon Kaufmann designed the residence and ancillary structures, and construction was completed in 1928. The estate was a gift from oil tycoon Edward L. Doheny to his son, Edward "Ned" Doheny, Jr., and his family. Following the purchase of the estate by the city of Beverly Hills in 1965, the property became a city park in 1971, and was subsequently added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 as Doheny Estate/Greystone. The house and grounds are often used in filmmaking and television production. The house's descending staircase is one of the most famous sets in Hollywood.”