Jody, Maribelle, and Baby Jonas

This painting has a history.

I had just finished most of the painting of Jody and Maribelle, and had set it aside until I could work on it again. Glenn was home from knee surgery, and had taken it off the desk for some reason. When I came home from work, I found it on the floor, and it had two rips in it and some creases.

I guess all artists have times when they struggle between their relationships and their artwork....this was one of them.

I took it to class, where we had a "can this marriage/artwork be saved" session. Sandy came up with the idea of disguising parts with rice paper. We looked through her very interesting stash, and found this one. I decided to do the entire background in rice paper, cutting carefully around the figures and applying it with mat medium. I also pulled some of the threads of the paper into their hair.

After seeing the finished product, Ginger suggested I thank my husband for ripping my painting, since it forced me to find an alternative solution, which ended up better than my original plan. I'm not planning to thank him, but I didn't kill him either.