VIEW IN MY ROOM
Taft Print
United States
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Fine Art Paper
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12 x 8 in ($40)
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White ($80)
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About The Artwork
From my blog (beatricebeeflowers.blogspot.com) titled "Mistaken Identity" I THOUGHT I KNEW HIM A good friend of mine, a former good friend of mine, someone who I once believed I loved, did something really stupid one day and ended up in federal prison. He told me he took the bribe but it only happened once. He was caught in a trap. His life was upended. I stood by him. Helped him out. I was furious at his greed and humbled by the quick turn of fortune. I visited him during his incarceration. The federal prison he was placed in is a minimum security facility out in the middle of nowhere. There are no fences to keep prisoners in as they walk from building to building but if you are stupid enough to try to escape they don't bring you back there. You go somewhere much worse. Taft is a hard scrapple place. Not much grows unless someone helps it along, a lot. Oil pumps, giant steel grasshoppers, nod to drivers along the road now and then. Trucks blow past tumbleweeds and stir little else. On my way back from visiting him one February morning this sky presented itself. Inspiration, and something good out of a very bad situation. LESSONS LEARNED The other day I got an email inquiring about this painting. I'm not sure why, but I didn't do my usual "WHOOP" in response. Instead I went for my morning walk and dealt with it later, with a clear head. Maybe I sensed something was afoot. The buyer wanted to give it to his wife as an anniversary gift. He wanted to know what inspired me. I demurred, saying that the landscape was striking in its starkness, desolation. After I hit send I thought to my self, "nice sell for a romantic gift!" Over the next few mornings my buyer peppered me with questions about the purchase, which I readily gave. I also noticed that as days went by, his grammar became odd. His punctuation and syntax uneven. Who forgets to capitalize part of his own name? I became suspicious and began investigating fraud. Then came the kicker...he would pay by check and since he was moving to the Philippines his "shipping agent" would contact me to arrange for delivery. A classic scam. They send you a check, which you deposit and the bank initially clears. Buyer has a change of heart and wants his money back which you oblige. Only later the bank finds it's fraudulent and you're out cash. I declined the sale and pointed out to the gentleman that he was indeed a scammer. No argument there. Never again heard from the guy. But it struck me that of all paintings to try to scam me on, he chose this one. The one whose genesis was an equally unsavory act. Could he sense the vulnerability I felt as drove down that road? As I bought the lies told to keep me close at hand? Did it reveal me to be the mark that I had once been? At least this time I saw the con coming.
Details & Dimensions
Print:Giclee on Fine Art Paper
Size:12 W x 8 H x 0.1 D in
Size with Frame:17.25 W x 13.25 H x 1.2 D in
Frame:White
Ready to Hang:Yes
Packaging:Ships in a Box
Shipping & Returns
Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.
Handling:Ships in a box. Art prints are packaged and shipped by our printing partner.
Ships From:Printing facility in California.
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United States
I was the youngest of four girls and I was the one who took up my dad’s offer to go with him to the nursery or help him in his workshop. My childhood memories smell like bags of manure in the back of the station wagon and sawdust on the floor of the garage. My dad taught me how to deadhead spent flowers and how to use a drill and how to temper steel. He gifted me with a miter box one year and a box full of acrylic paints and brushes another year. As an engineer he was a frustrated artist but one who could paint with plants and outfit a 27’ sailboat, sails and all. He filled our lives with beautiful things and those things have continued to be important to me as well, especially flowers. And he gave me that box of paints. From Yankee stock, my dad saved scraps of wood. There was a pile I could pilfer for whatever project I wanted. In middle school I used them to paint stylized characters of girls with long legs and flowers, always flowers. When I paint flowers now it’s as if I am gathering them together on the canvas as a gift for someone. I try to summon those childhood memories to imbue all of their essences together: their smell, their velvet petals, their brilliant color (not so much the manure). I like to paint them powerful and in-your-face, filling as much of the canvas as I can so the viewer gets a bee’s eye view. And sometimes I paint them in isolation, sometimes waifs, sometimes powerful in their solitude. I think about my work as autobiographical in some ways. The flowers, certainly, but also the infrequent landscapes which usually document a passage of time and space like a move across country. And in the past several years children have reappeared in my work. Now part of my own expanded family. Definitely marking the passage of time. My process is quite deliberate. I start with an inspiration photo that I take with my phone; do some tweaking of the image in Photoshop and then create a detailed to scale canvas-sized newsprint drawing outlining important elements which I then transfer to canvas. I isolate the subject by filling in the background with a dark color then work section by section painting thin layers to develop the various elements of the piece. I use a stay-wet palette so that I can work slowly to build thin color upon thin color. I will do several glazes near the end of the process. My last task is to complete the background, neatening errant brushwork, etc. I like short handled brushes and my rolling stool.
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