Creating Menagerie

This week, I share a recent acrylic painting called Menagerie and talk about the process. This is an example of making the most of the rich visual vocabulary – the topic that I talked about in last week’s video, but now we focus more on the idea of the piece rather than the style.

Recently, I have been thinking about the news feeds and their many truths. Although things are presented in beautiful phrases and pictures, the truth is much more complicated, and there are layers behind them. The same applies to people. Even though we try to be human, we are still animals, too.

When I paint, I struggle with the same thing: should I paint a flower or a soul?

I want to create beautiful paintings, but on the other hand, a painting is like a person. If you treat the painting superficially, you don’t get to see its true beauty.

My goal is to give my paintings the freedom to be themselves and this painting really revealed its heart to me.

However, my task is not only to reveal the wild nature of the painting, but also to gently train it.

Menagerie is sold already. I hope it will bring joy to its new owner.

Details of Menagerie

Here are detail pics of the finished piece. I like how the style of this painting is partly illustrative. It looks like it’s partly drawn with a brush.

I wanted to create an impression that the animals are captive but still wild and strong enough to break free.

This painting has many layers and details.

I tried to bring up the similarity between flowers and animals.

Here you can see the big flower up close. The brush strokes are loose, but still, I painted them with a lot of thought and care.

I hope this inspires you to create too!