Paint Box

My parents by far have the biggest collection of my work. I've been giving them handmade presents for years, from paintings to prints, ceramics to decorated boxes, and they keep this stuff out on public view along with their family photographs and heirlooms. It's always kind of surreal being confronted with my work whenever I go home to visit, as I rarely keep any of my own work on display in my house. Too many opportunities for nitpicking.

My parent's guest bedroom. Three of my drawings are here. I painted that chest on the left too.

Here's that chest. The dresses are based on sketches I did at the Museum of London.

Anyway, one of parent's neighbors, a sweet lady named Virginia, has always enjoyed seeing my work whenever she visits, particularly the functional objects I've painted like boxes and nightstands. One day my dad asked whether I'd be able to paint something for her. I naturally said yes, so a few days later a small wooden box arrived.

Aside from being told that she loved goldfinches and flowers, I was given free reign, but since I like to customize these projects whenever I can, I decided to incorporate those elements.

I started out by painting the exterior blue, knowing it would made a nice contrast to the yellow goldfinch I'd be painting on top of the box.

I also decided to paint the interior green, partly because I didn't want the box to appear unfinished, but also because I wanted the green foliage of the exterior to connect with the inside of the box. In retrospect, my color scheme was definitely inspired by the blues and greens I see whenever I go swimming at Bottomless Lakes in the early morning.

I also added a green gradation detail along the bottom of the bottom, establishing a visual connect between interior and exterior.

Next, I went in with white and painted in the silhouettes of the forms I'd painting in later. After leafing through my various sketchbooks, I decided to settle on southwestern flowers. A lot of these flower drawings date from 2015, when we had an unusually wet spring and the fields were just exploding with color. Contrary to popular belief, the desert is replete with plant life, particularly after it rains, and I thought Virginia would enjoy seeing these western blooms.

The next day, I painted in all the forms. Here's how the box turned out:

I'd say this project took about 5 1/2 hours total. Even though I hadn't done a box like this in several years, I was still able to do it quickly because I'd done so many of them in the past. The important thing was that she liked it though, and in the end that's all that matters.