There is No Stairway to Heaven Print

There was no Ukraine conflict in 2015 like there is now, but the danger was there that it could become that. There is no stairway to heaven.. a take on a well-known song title to say there is no easy solution to anything in life. We just need to do the best we can and keep plugging away. I love to mess with optical effects so this theme was a natural for me. Allover paintings are usually flat so I wanted to do one that had a lot of depth of field. I have more ideas in the drawing box... This painting was 95% finished when the time came to drive to Mittweida, Germany for a one-man show requiring my presence and several paintings to travel with me. The canvas was originally stretched over standard 210cm ( 83in.) 210cm ( 83in.) )and not having the depth I really wanted to see them to have) stretchers. I had to remove the painting after it was dry and roll it up for travel. We had quite a hard time restretching the canvas right before the show and me with very little sleep as you can see in the final image showing some light buckling bottom left. At the end of the show in January of 2016 the painting went into storage locally to await the next event planned in not-so-distant Leipzig at the "Sächsische Landesanstalt für privaten Rundfunk und neue Medien" ( Bureau for private Broadcasting and New Media of the State of Saxony) where art events are produced on occasion. The painting had to be rolled up once again to go back to France and was restretched on heavy duty custom made stretchers. All surfaces were painstakingly retouched, as you can see in the two closeup vignettes I added to the photos section. this painting is perfectly flat since I properly restretched it, there is no buckling. Note: The painting does not have professional gallery style hanging hardware but rather some string and wire wrapped around the backing bars which can be strung over 2 hooks and then balanced into place using a level. works like a charm. :-)