A match made in heaven…

October 22, 2022

Sometimes things are just meant to be. Recently, after completing two intense portrait paintings, I relaxed my muscles and worked on a fun little project shown in the screenshot below. And this week I found the perfect frame for it!

The 12/16″ acrylic painting is based on a couple of reference pictures by my friend and fellow artist Maria Wulf, who lives in a wonderful rural area in one of the northern states of the US (Find her blog here: https://www.fullmoonfiberart.com/). An old barn is part of her farm property. The barn is used for storing hay, and all things discarded. The scene has so many elements that I like! Of course, the senior barn cat named Minnie plays the lead role. But the broken colourful furniture on a top platform of the barn is also really adding to the character of it all. This is not usually a topic that I choose for my paintings, but I was just charmed by it.

The perfect frame

I am preparing the upcoming ‘Artists of Halton’ show at Joshua Creek Heritage Art Center in Oakville, and this week I went to visit my favourite framing lady Sharon Majeau in Oakville with some works that needed framing. I took the ‘Barn Cat’ along as an afterthought. As I was waiting for my turn, my eye was drawn to a framed stock photograph in a rough wooden frame. I had noticed it during previous visits, but this time it really ‘spoke’ with me. The rough wooden frame looked authentic and when I asked Sharon about it, she told me she had bought it at an estate sale up north. It used to be… a window in an old barn, that had crumbled. I showed her the ‘Barn cat’ painting, we locked eyes and both instantly came to the same conclusion: the painting fit this frame to a tee! So Sharon was kind enough to squeeze me in despite her busy schedule, and, as a result I walked out of her store with a framed and ready to hang painting. I don’t think I have ever seen a better example of ‘a match made in heaven’!

The show in Joshua Creek is a juried one, so I hope that this artwork will resonate with them and make it into the Gallery. A gallery that, mind you, is a renovated old barn on the historic site of the Heritage Art Center! With a bit of luck you can come and see it between early November 2022 and mid January 2023. I will keep you posted!

I am actually entering another piece as well. It is one of the last pastel-drawings of a large collection that was sold in Europe 20 years ago. Gosh, that sounds so long ago! That collection is still so vivid in my mind… This work is called ‘The Blue Horse’. It is a large pastel of a stallion in one of the conservation areas in my home country of The Netherlands, where feral horses roam free to keep the scenery in its original park-like state. There is a longer article on my website about my experience with these horses in the ‘Personal Stories’-section, if you are interested: The filly that lived – Tricky’s story