Nah, didn't work.
Kiwi Heather and I dashed up to Dafen yesterday, as we thought we were meant to, to pick up our commissions only to discover the paintings weren't ready and that the artist appeared to be awaiting our feedback in case he had to make changes before sending them to be framed. Guess yesterday was "what do you think?" day and not "pick-em-up" day like we thought.
Damn that perpetual language barrier!
Heather reviews a photograph
of her finished portrait.
We never saw the actual paintings
which were clearly someplace else.
It's minions doing the grunt work
in an alcove in some back alley,
I'm telling you.
For an entire week, Heather was so very excited about what the artist would do with the photo of her children she was "counting sleeps" and so was most disappointed he hadn't put his own strange spin on it. But nonetheless she had to admit it was an excellent painting so she OKed it.
And the portrait I commissioned? It too wasn't what I asked for. With my fulsome mime and elaborate sketches I thought I'd illustrated that I wanted Father Bransfield's image extracted from Irish photographer Frank Kearn's gorgeous photo and placed instead against a background of stained glass windows with all this different-coloured light streaming through. So simple, yes? Instead...
The artist's cutie-pie minion
shows me my painting.
But just double-click to look what he did with it? Nothing very much, actually; simply playing up the strange subtextual narrative features that made me select that photo in the first place.
I commissioned this painting to be donated, if it was good enough, to Laucala Bay Parish in Suva, Fiji, where our dear friend Father Bransfield had his last posting. I thought it would be nice to have him still there, for all time hanging on the wall in his study, since that was the place where he spread so much love and comfort, working his own particular brand of magic, for so many people.
Since I also intend to have other portraits done, only with Father much younger, to donate to Tutu Seminary, which he built, and a slightly older-version portrait for Lomeri Seminary, which he also build much later, this was just a test to see if it were possible.
So what do you think? A success?
Hey, how churlish and too-too-surreal would it be to demand an artist do "bizarre and interesting" things in his paintings! Imagine hitting one over the head and shouting "More weird! More weird!"! Nah! Not on! Although there's a part of me that thinks it would be rather fun.
Anyway, Heather and I talked about it over lunch, deciding that we did love our commissions, and that neither of us have any real complaints because, honestly, although they may not be what we wanted, nor what we thought we were paying for, the rendering is just so stunning and our paintings so beautiful just as they are, we are well served. And, sure, we speculated long and hard over why he didn't "Go All-Out Original" like he usually did, and ended up deciding that, because of that damned language barrier, our artist was too worried about misunderstanding us so just went with what we gave him.
Oh, and here's something else very interesting. On the artist's desk there was a days'-old English language newspaper which I found really bizarre considering the gentleman doesn't speak English, so, while Heather was reviewing her portrait, I went through it, genuinely curious as to why it would be there ... and then I saw ...
First double-click on this photo,
then check out the news photo
and immediately look upwards.
It's like deja vu all over again!
Last week I noticed the artist taking sneaky photos of us and wondered why. Now I know. In his bio, he's a newspaper photographer who decided to throw it all up to pursue a career as an artist, but, from this, I guess he's kept all his newspaper contacts and bolsters his income by still free-lancing here and there.
And, hey, how embarrassing is it that my New Year Resolution was to become more Planet-Friendly by being less of a consumer, and here it is, only two weeks later, and I'm being used to represent "Shenzhen's Consumer-Led Economic Recovery!"
Planet-Killing Consumer-Monster: C'est Moi!
But the up-shot of all this is ... we have to go back again next week. Heather was almost cross about it but me? Oh no! Definitely not so much! And last night, when I told him, Keith kinda sneered a little and drawled "You obviously deliberately misunderstood so you could sneak in yet another visit to buy lots more paintings."
He's not right, although, you know, he's not entirely wrong either. On both these recent visits I've bought home more paintings; just ones I've seen in passing that I couldn't live without, and there are still a great many I really, really NNNNNEEEED and would love to go back for.
And, yes, we have definitely run out of wall space. Maybe, in future, we'll have to borrow other people's walls. Any volunteers?
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