A Joyous Pair

Two pieces.  Intended to hang together as you see them here.  These were a DELIGHT to paint.  My client loves the mountains,  she loves Pikes Peak,  she loves the truth found in  God's word, and she LOVES THE PROMISED RETURN OF THE LORD JESUS.  That's why I painted a cloudy Peak, instead of one with a clear blue sky.  Jesus will come in the clouds.  PERHAPS TODAY.

On a more prosaic note, the canvas with the words was stinking hard!!!  I paint words all the time, but they're usually on a ginormous canvas.  This one is only 11" x 14".  That's a tiny brush!  I can tell you I prayed a lot over it!!

What To Do? What To Do?

What do you do with a big, old vault door that dominates a wall?  It's kinda hard to hide, isn't it?  Putting a couch in front of it won't do the trick.

So you paint around it instead!!!  And not just boring wall paint, but a mural!!  And what's best, is you actually incorporate the vault door into the  mural, by turning it into the entrance to an old mine.

Then, you go to the local lumber yard and pick out some rough timbers to wrap the door with.  This picture only shows the side pieces.  There will be a piece across the top too.

What's really spiffy, is our particular lumber yard has o-o-old  half-logs laying around, and you can get weathered looking wood with cool knots, like this one.

My dad told me that there's actually some historical precedence for putting a vault door over a mine.  Evidently the Cresson Mine in Cripple Creek was originally a poor producer, until the owner found a room size opening bursting with gold.  He immediately went and had a vault door installed at the entrance of the mine.  I went searching to see if this story was true, and found this on Wikipedia:

 On 24 Nov. 1914, Dick Roelofs was supervising the exploration of the mine to the 1300 level, when a large gold-filled vug was blasted open on the 1200 level. The next day, Roelof, a mine owner and an attorney explored the "cave of sparkling jewels". The vug measured 14 feet wide, 23 feet long, 36 feet high, which took a month to empty, and yielded 60,000 troy ounces of gold.^[10]:78-80

This particular vault door doesn't protect any gold.  It was already in the house when the current owners bought it.  In fact, I think perhaps the vault is now protecting cardboard boxes!!  Whatever's on the inside, this is the final result of what I painted on the outside!

Two More From Genesis

I sort of got these out of order.  Well, I PAINTED them in order, I just didn't PHOTOGRAPH them in order.  There's something about finishing a canvas, and just wanting to pack up and go home!  With a celebratory Starbucks for the drive!

The first image was the idea of one of my pastors.  I don't think people "get" it, though.  It's the story of the flood.  And that's Pikes Peak sticking up out of the water.

The second is from God's promise to Abraham.  God loves faith.  "And Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness."  Beautiful.

Today I finished up painting the ram caught in the thicket, from the story where Abraham goes to sacrifice Isaac in obedience to God.  And did I take a picture?  Or did I go to Starbucks and head home?  I'll let you figure it out.

Plein Air Painting

For some reason the french phrase "plein air" has stuck...nobody says they went out to paint in the wide open spaces.  I guess because it takes too long to spit out that phrase!  That's what I did today, though.

Murphy and I and two artist friends hiked half way to the Crags and then settled down on a broad rock to paint.  There are definitely some challenges about painting out there...where the sun dries your watercolors before you want them to be dry...where the wind blows over your water bottle and flips your pages (wet or not!)...where the flies decide you make a lovely landing spot...Of course, what am I complaining about?  I live in the mountains of Colorado where the air is DRY, and there are NO MOSQUITO'S, and there aren't any creepy crawlies making themselves at home in your shoes.

It was a lovely day.  As the afternoon wore on the clouds began to build, and build, and build.  I was looking at the tops of these dead aspen trees and realized that we might need to call this painting trip to an end.  Thunderstorms are a regular thing around here in the afternoons, and you don't want to be high up, near the top of Pikes Peak when they hit!  Time to go home!

Pikes Peak!

This was commissioned by a friend a really long time ago.  It took awhile to find the right reference picture...which is funny, considering I look at this mountain every single day!  Once we agreed on the pic, I fell off the ladder!  So this job was delayed repeatedly.

But now it's done!  We took it to the framer yesterday, and within the week it should be ready to hang on the wall.  To quote my sister-in-law, closure is good!