Seeing with New Eyes - "Travel Journal" collection

One of the most fun things about the evolution of my paintings over the past five years is that I get to revisit, draw new inspiration from, and reinterpret old photos that I have already painted from. In some cases, I am now painting from photos that were previously way outside my strict landscape wheelhouse.

As the famous French novelist Marcel Proust said, "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes."

During the past couple months, I have delighted in looking at old photos from trips to Chile, Cuba, Spain, Italy, Austria, Germany, Curaçao, and, ok fine, California. I snapped all these photos of our built world because I liked the colors and shapes, the patterns and textures. I never intended to paint these scenes, but I loved them.

I am currently working on a series of twelve paintings called “Travel Journal.” Each painting is inspired by an old photo from a trip. 

The image above shows a bedroom that my husband and I stayed in in a Havana AirBnb in 2017 and a painting I did in 2020 inspired by the colors in the photo. The image below shows a 3”x3” sketch I did this summer based on the same inspiration photo, because I still love the photo. I didn’t want to make a painting of a bed though, so I next did a 4”x6” painting that simplified and abstracted the shapes. I loved that design, and the light green diagonal shape at the top of the first sketch, so I proceeded with a combination of the two for the full 18”x24” painting.

The paintings in this collection range from 12”x16” to 18”x24” and they will all be framed in maple floater frames made by a Portland framer. The prices range from $575 to $900. I haven’t painted anything in this size range recently and I am excited to bring these paintings to you.

See the "Travel Journal" paintings here.