"A Wilted Dream"

This is a portrait of Frida I have been working on for a long toime as well. It is not a commisssioned piece, but one of my many peices I have designed in my art journals and started to bring to life. It depicts a sad Frida to me, perhaps contemplating her many trials with Diego. I had just come back from seeing an exhibit of her woirk at the Dalí Museum at the time and I especially loved her journal pages. I layered my favosite recipe for my powdered marble plaster onto the canvas and then carved out one of her letters to Diego as the background. I then gilded the background in sterling silver leaf. I began making each flower for her headpiece but I decided to create most of the flowers in various stages of wilting to straight up dead ones and the leaves as well. I envisioned her being tired at the end of her day with the flowers from her garden that she had placed in her hair that morning, now wilted and tired to match her own mood. Her jewelry will be in gold leaf. I began to add the raised texture for them. 

This morning when I walked into the studio, the dawn light entered through the front door glass panes and danced with the silver leaf of the canvas. This is one of the many reasons I LOVE working with gold and silver leaf, metal foils and even copper eaf too. The paintings are never the same; they look different under different lighting throughout the day and night... evershifting just like our inner moods and thoughts.