This work started as one of the pieces that I paint live during a church service, it was first painted over the course of two services on one Sunday morning, and was inspired by the subject of marriage, which was the sermon topic. I approached the subject by looking to my own set of natural symbols, here a nest represents a home. This nest holds broken eggs and dead baby birds that stand in for the difficulties that any marriage is bound to face, but is also accompanied by a pair of butterflies, a pair of lives that are transformed by the bond of marriage. The nest image consists of nine separate iPhone photographs, creating a photo mosaic that was first posted to Instagram – I often create photo mosaics there that are later used in artworks. Like most of my work, The Marriage Bed depicts nature and consists of many layers of media, but unlike most, I came back to it after maybe a year from when I first thought I had finished it and realized that it needed a little something more, so I came back to it and added more layers of paint and texture around the outer edges of the piece. I have used actual dried pressed flower stalks as collage elements, as well as my own photographs and collected papers. People often enjoy finding all the little things hidden in my work.
The Marriage Bed – photo transfers, color pencil, acrylic, ephemera, wax pastel & dried pressed flowers on cradled panel (40×40″) Contact for availability.