Whew! I’m excited to announce I finished my largest painting – to date…..
Last week we worked on a very large art installation piece for a church in downtown Atlanta. I was commissioned to do a painting for a new service they’re starting and as Erik (my husband) and I prayed through what I’d paint about, I thought painting an Atlanta skyline was most appropriate. At first, I had thought about adding the church to the Atlanta silhouette but began thinking it would be more powerful if the actual piece were about bringing Christ into the city – and not necessarily bringing the city into the church. With this thought in mind, I had a friend construct a custom frame to fit my dream of a 6 foot by 3 foot “illuminated painting.” And within a few days, the largest piece of art I’ve created to date was completed – from the sketches to the final installation – it all happened pretty quickly!
The piece measures 6? x 3? x 3 1/2? and was created with three main elements: wax, light and salt. I added the salt in with the dark black wax, giving the sillhoutte of the city skyline more of a texture. And then the major component of the piece was the rope light we installed into the frame to backlight the whole piece.
The result? Well….since it’s a relatively new technique, there’s more fine tuning to be done on future paintings, but it was sure a great experience! And the Sunday morning we went to install it in their worship center, the pastor was doing a sermon on “salt and light.” Go figure! ;) I will for sure keep experimenting with this technique – because I truly love the translucency of the beeswax. It’s very inspiring and spiritually meaningful.
