Losing Geoff (Triptych) ~SOLD (Somebody Liked This!)
Three 9 in. x 12 in. panels, acrylic on canvas
$378 (unframed)
This triptych is a few years old, and had been living a quiet life in my home for most of that time, with only three ventures out of the house to go on display at brief events. This week, at its third outing, it sold almost as soon as it went public. In fact, at the New Light Art Show reception, several people commented on it and one woman told me I could have sold it at least a couple of times over, based on her own love for it, and on the feedback she said she'd heard from others.
Losing Geoff was the first triptych I ever painted, and, despite it having been a memorial exercise on the occasion of losing a friend to a sudden illness back in our old church, it was an enjoyable challenge to paint. The composition is a "treescape" or an expanse of oak branches viewed from underneath the tree, looking up at the summer sky, and spanning the entirety of three panels. The piece may be enjoyed for what it is, without knowledge of the "Easter egg" within it to which the title refers.
The story the painting tells is as follows: The leaves are a community, of sorts, all living within reach of each other, brushing against and interacting with one another, all clinging to, and receiving life from the tree to which they are attached. A few bare twigs void of leaves mark the piece here and there, but on the leftmost panel, there is one vacant twig, freshly bereft of its leafy member, marked by a single, glistening red drop on its terminus, a fresh wound made by the amputation of the living leaf newly ripped from it. This image was an apt reflection of the painful void in our fellowship left by the unexpected death of our dear friend and brother in Christ.
The branch will not be bare forever. We will vacate our own branches each of us, one by one, but we will be together with our lost one again. Spring will come. He promised.
