"Missing You", 20" X 26" watercolor and fluid acrylic

Missing You 20" X 26" watercolor and fluid acrylic

Missing You

acrylic and watercolor

20" X 26" image, matted in brushed silver frame

$950

AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE HERE

Giclee prints also available 

Me photographing the Source Material

My inspiration for Missing You started in Charleston, NC.  My husband and I were walking back from the waterfront to our hotel when I saw this bicycle chained to a tree at roadside.  Weeds, grass and other plants had grown up through the sprockets of the wheels and woven through the bike indicating its disuse.  Not knowing the story of why the bicycle was in such a state intrigued me.  I wanted to relay the unknown story to others so they could add their story to the painting.  Had the owner just been too busy to ride?  Were they sick and unable to ride?  Had they gone off to college and the bike was left behind while the owner moved onto other things in his/her life?  It didn’t matter what the story was, I just felt it needed to be shared; so others could bring their own story to the scene.

I started to play with the image to emphasize the story.  A few extra vines were added or moved to make it more obvious that they wove through the wheels and bicycle supports.  Cars and signs in the photograph were removed to avoid these distractions; to me these were unwanted noise that would hinder the story.

I liked the red color of the bike (I think my brother had a red Schwinn when we were growing up), so when I started to explore color options the red had to stay.  I went to my favorite color scheme site, http://colorschemedesigner.com/ , where I decided to use an accented analog color scheme based around red.   As I worked through the painting I found I needed to include some Prussian Blue to get the deep greens and browns I wanted.  A few additional blues found their way into the scene as interesting cooler counterpoints.  

I'd love to hear what you think the story may have been behind this lonely bike.

To see my other work where I combine fluid acrylic and watercolor check this blog post

Copyright April M Rimpo All Rights Reserved. You may share my work with attribution and a link to this source site, but all other uses are prohibited.