Recently, I was asked to create two large pieces of art to be hung on either side of a fireplace in a beautiful home being staged in Sarasota. When custom art work is called for, I try to create something that will speak to the project it’s designed for–but also go about my work with the future in mind–hoping that the art will be useful in more staging than just this one time.
Doshia Wagner, Designer and Co-owner of NonStop Staging (http://NonStopStaging.com), asked for two tall pieces with horizontal lines. After some discussion with her about colors and design elements, I went shopping for canvases. Mainly from a practicality standpoint, I settled on the idea of using a total of six canvases, each 2’x3′. By arranging three canvases horizontally and attaching them to each other, I was able to create a 3’x6′ piece for each side of the fireplace.
Once the canvases were all attached, I started preparing to paint. On this particular project, there was a good amount of free space in the garage of the house being staged, so that’s where I set up shop.
I had done some advance design work in Adobe to create guidelines for myself. I exported my digital file to a USB flash drive that I inserted into my projector. This was very useful for quickly being able to sketch out the basics onto the canvas. From time to time as I was applying the paint, I turned the projector on for reference to make sure I was keeping things in line.
The design I put together was fairly complicated. I wanted both pieces to be perfectly symmetrical, creating a mirror image. I also wanted matching reversals for the top and bottom corner canvases. This way, the components could be paired in a variety of ways for the future. In a nutshell, the six individual paintings could be mixed and matched to make a six foot square piece, 4’x6′ combinations, and other arrangements–vertically or horizontally–and so on.
Working in the garage turned out to be a great plan, as I was able to walk into the room where the paintings would be installed to reference the colors of draperies and accessories whenever necessary.
We installed the paintings when they were barely dry and I did some additional tweaking after they were on the wall.
On this particular project, I was honored to be the photographer for Brittany Blackman, of Optimus Residential Realty, and the artist for NonStop Staging. Doshia Wagner and I were both especially pleased when we were able to see our work on the cover of Homes & Land Magazine.
Mirror Image, two images each comprised of three 2’x3′ panels, acrylic on canvas
For more stories about my art work, click here: https://christinacooklee.com/artwork-blog/
