Peacock Box

After I spent all that time painting the Adele Bauer-Bloch II project, I felt inspired by Klimt. I loved his gold upon gold layering, the bright colors, and especially the repeated patterns.

Something made me think of peacocks, and peacock-inspired patterns. The eye shape of a peacock’s tail is very distinctive. The way it repeats on the bird mimics the repeating patterns you see on cloth.

I had this wooden box for a while. I think I originally was going to do wood-burning on it, but this peacock idea formed in my head, so I decided to see if I could do a Klimt-like painting, with a realistic woman’s face and arms and some abstracted repeating motifs.

It took many, many layers of paint to get a decent luminosity. The inside I painted that pinkish magenta, but then I hated it, and repainted it gold. It still shows magenta in most lights. Except for the woman’s face, most of this shows differently in different lights.

I just sent it to a friend of mine, who helped with beta-reading MULBERRY WANDS. I hope she likes it.