“Can you paint my wife?”
I was about to reply “sure!!”, and expected him to send some photos for reference.
Instead, he sent me a video.
“I’m struggling to find the exact frame”, he said.
I watched the video, and was instantly hooked. In a public, nondescript place, bathed in the glow of tungsten city lights, she was dancing, laughing, oblivious to the crowd, drowned in sheer delight. The joy, the freedom… it was infectious! I don’t know the occasion, but I do know that love gives us a sense of unimaginable freedom, and I’m absolutely certain that, despite the crowd, the only person that truly mattered to her is the one she was dancing to.
But I had to focus. There was work to be done.
I suggested a few frames, and we picked a favourite. I wanted to paint her care-free world, not the actual surroundings. How? What colours, what tones, what composition? How much detail, how much abstraction? Love and joy isn’t something we can explicitly describe, but no matter… the way I smiled through the painting, you would think I was mental.
The painting was still wet when he collected it, but we made it just in time for her Christmas surprise. When he texted, “She loves it!”, I turned emo….
No better way to savour quite possibly the happiest commission I’ve done to date.
36″x24″ Oil on linen
