The Meaning of Life

This original painting is textured and the scans may show "hot spots" where light is bouncing off the raised parts. Additional scans are available on request.

(The image and textures continue around the deep 1.5" staple-free sides so you can display this beautiful piece unframed.)

This painting makes me tremendously happy. It fills me with joy. This is a magical piece. I do not want to say too much about it, because this special landscape says enough all on its own. But I will tell you that it is filled with deep rich color and warm comforting light and the grass and the tree are highly textured - almost three dimensional. I will also say that this one has something more, too. I don't know what it is or how to describe it, but this is a really neat image that can calm your heart and help you remember that this world is a beautiful gift.

How The Meaning of Life was created..... This one was a labor of love. I have been working on it for weeks. Occasionally, I would work on other paintings and turn this canvas towards the wall so I could see it fresh in a day or two. And it always made me smile to see this piece again. Every time. That is not usually the case with my work. Mostly I go through a stage where I really dislike each piece before it comes together, but this one was different. After priming the canvas with black acrylic gesso, I used palette knives to create the fun textured grass and I used my fingers to push paint into the ridge that would become the tree trunk. Once that layer dried, I used my fingers again to create the textured tree top and, again, I waited for that layer to dry. Then I used wide soft brushes to lay down many many many semi-transparent layers of soft blue in the sky. The ground was created with browns and reds - just like the earth - and then I layered warm green and yellow grasses over the top of that darker layer - just like the earth! The reddish brown underneath is what makes the green really pop. I used small soft brushes to paint the tree and the majority of the fluffy wispy clouds. Then I used tiny detail brushes to paint the bird and to add highlights to the clouds and to edge the tree truck and to paint many individual blades of grass.

The Meaning of Life was painted on a professional quality gallery-wrapped canvas with deep 1.5" sides. This piece would look wonderful displayed unframed directly on the wall. Or it can be easily and affordably framed as it required no matting or glass.