The "ALWAYS EVOLVING PAINTING"

Okay, so here is the story about the painting above my kitchen table… I said that I would post about it later on, and I guess now is as good a time as any!

I had been looking for a larger painting to go in my kitchen over the table.  I have a large wall there, just sitting like a blank slate! 

My husband loves the color white, to me.. white is too sterile, I love color (guess it’s the creativeness in me.) So when my husband and I bought our house a few years ago we made a deal, I could paint LIGHT colors in the rest of the rooms in the house as long as I would agree to let the kitchen have white walls… so I took that deal.

I painted the living room a light sage green, our bedroom a light golden yellow, the bathroom a light airy blue color, and the girls room a light purple pink. (I know.. WOW right. :)  But it is the first time he agreed to any color at all and I didn't want to overwhelm him.)

So.. back to the kitchen wall, now it’s just a big white empty space above the table where we eat at, and it was just calling out to be adorned with SOMETHING!... I searched all over for a painting or mirror of some kind that would go there perfectly. Everything I found that I loved way just way out of my price range, and everything that I found IN my price range was not what I wanted. So there the wall was… just empty… day after day as I searched…

 UNTIL…

One day I picked up a book, and started to read in it… the book was titled The dwelling place… or something like that. I do not really remember. It was a lovely short read about how the home is a safe place to land at the end of the day, etc… it had little stories by readers who had wrote in and shared examples of how they made their house homey for their families, and told about traditions and such.

One lady wrote about her “Always Evolving Painting” and I absolutely LOVED the idea!!!

This is how it works… I took a large cheap canvas painting, unframed it, and painted white over the entire thing to start with a blank slate.  I then took out every color paint we had in the house and set it out on the cement floor in our unfinished breezeway so that if any paint got on the floor it would not be a big deal.

I called each one of our children (and a friend of our son who was spending the night) into the breeze way and told them that they could each pick three colors to use, then one at a time, they took turns painting and drawing anything and everything they wanted on the canvas for a certain amount of time, layering color over color... using bags and forks to add in texture... after each child had their turn on the painting I had my turn, and added a few finishing touches.  We then waiting for the painting to dry, re-framed it, and hung it over the table.  We had a wonderful, one of a kind MASTERPIECE!!!

My Mother-in-law gave me the beautiful sconces and flame-less candles for Christmas last year, and I thought they were the perfect touch for the painting.

The wonderful thing about this “Always Evolving Painting” is that when you get tired of the way the painting looks… you just take it down, and take turns going at it again!  I am going to keep a little photo album of the painting each time we create a new one, so one day we can look back over the years and see the many different ways it has evolved.

You can manipulate, a little bit, what you want it to look like by limiting the colors you will use.  When we made our MASTERPIECE the first time, we used every color we had… but now that we have our new kitchen table, I think this weekend we will use only Maroons, Reds, Blacks, Creams, Light greens and whites.

Our current (and first) painting has been hanging for about 7 months now; we all think it’s time for a change! So this weekend I think it will “EVOLVE” :)  I will post our new painting after it is completed as well....

Happy Creating Everyone!!!

~Angel~