Large Framed Original Pastel Fine Art Paintings

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Angel Trike

36" x 24" pastel

Turning Point

32" x 24" pastel

Angel Trike is one of a series of pastel portraits I painted because I was interested in the nostalgic feeling I felt when I looked at my son’s tricycle as it hung in storage in the garage. I painted the tricycle’s portrait from different vantage points and through this work, learned to look at my own life from a new perspective.

These portraits became an exploration of my experience as both a child growing up in a small town and, later, as a parent in the suburbs. Angel Trike (above left) illustrates the bright side and potential of human life.

In Turning Point (above right), the tricycle is perched on a windowsill, seemingly gazing out into the distance. The tricycle takes on a lifelike quality as it looks out to what the future holds.

I staged Figure 8 --Thousand Words (right) by setting the tricycle upside down on my drafting table and lighting it with a halogen lamp. I worked at night because I liked the drama of the shadow cast by the tricycle's front wheel. This painting's rich background consists of thousands of thoughts that emerged as I drew. The thoughts were translated into art using layers of pastel pigments. The wheel became suspended in the myriad of words and layers of color.

I used the lyrics from the song Spinning Wheel to inject life and movement into the tricycle as it hangs from a hook in the ceiling in Spinning Wheel (right). "What goes up, must come down, spinning wheel got to go round..." describes the sense that the tricycle longs to return to the ground to be ridden freely again in this painting.

Hot Seat (below right), features the tricycle waiting outside for the child to return and ride it once again. Children's drawings adorn the sidewalk, mirroring the image itself and its foundation as a pastel painting.

The tricycle portrayed in Hang Time (below right) casts a shadow resembling a wheel chair as it hangs in storage. This drawing is symbolic of our energetic childlike beginnings and the slower, more thoughtful maturation into adulthood.

Small paintings also exhibited at the Festival are featured below: