God spoke: "Light!"
And light appeared.
God saw that light was good
and separated light from dark.
God named the light Day,
he named the dark Night.
It was evening, it was morning-
Genesis 1:3-5
When I was approached by First United Methodist Church in Downtown Laurel about creating some large-scale pieces to hang in the hallway going to their newly renovated children's wing, I was so excited. I love to paint, but I REALLY love to paint for kids.
I knew almost immediately that I wanted to paint the six days of creation because I could not stop thinking about the beautiful parallels between the creation that I experience every day in my studio and the beauty that God created. The scale of the canvases they needed for their space was roughly three feet wide by six feet tall, so I decided to paint the originals in a smaller scale and then blow them up to the necessary size. By doing this, the pencil marks and paint strokes would become larger than life.
I decided to paint the originals as one long painting so that I could create a flow throughout the pieces. You would follow along this beautiful flowing line as you walked down the hallway. Starting with something as simple as light and dark, the challenge became making Day One just as visually interesting as Day Six.
Once completed, I tore the piece down into the six individual days and scanned into my computer. I sent the scans to one of our wonderful manufacturers in Highpoint, NC who printed my pieces onto canvas! Fincher and I spent a whole day stretching the pieces over stretcher bars and then installed the huge canvases in the hallway at FUMC.
It’s so awesome to be a part of a community like ours that is so supportive of the arts. This was such an awesome opportunity, I am honored to have my work hanging in such a beautiful space.
Prints of the entire collection are now available at the Laurel Mercantile!