Biggest Commission I've ever done!

I haven’t written a blog post in a while as I’ve been super busy with commissions, moving house and life in general! But I wanted to share with you guys one of the commissions I did that was a bit out of the ordinary.

If you follow my work you can tell I am usually a watercolour painter, not venturing past paper much bigger than A3. This commission however was on canvas and done with acrylic paints/mixed media! I used to do a lot of acrylic painting at college and university so I accepted the challenge, excited to get back into my old painting style.

The client wanted something to represent the conflict on Wall Street, a key talking point in his office. He was interested in the  ‘The Charging Bull on Wall Street’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charging_Bull) which often associated with capitalism. Most will agree that capitalism is conflict both good and bad. However, right now many are innocent victims are suffering from the side effects of capitalism.

So he wanted to show the conflict in a painting - “the bad of Capitalism being represented by an animal i.e. the iconic Charging Bull” being fought “Good” being a represented by an equally powerful animal often associated with gentleness ; a bear”. Bears despite their obvious size advantage bears rarely attack and their diets are 80-90% plant based etc (no to mention bears association our childhood toys/cartoons).

So I set to work creating a large textured painting, using bright colours to lighten up his office and with a slight abstract style. We agreed on tall buildings, a road and flashes of yellow for taxis to represent the New York setting in the background of the painting. The foreground would be the bull and bear. 

I decided on cool purples and blues for the bull which are traditionally used to represent the ‘bad’, and then warmer yellows and oranges for the bear to portray the ‘good’. Purple and yellow are also opposites on the colour wheel, making them great colours to use together as they make each other stand out to make sure both subjects are noticed equally. 

I wanted to have the animals in interesting positions, not just charging at each other from opposite ends of the canvas. So I decided to paint them at slightly more interesting angles, giving the feeling of tension and anticipated conflict without showing them directly fighting.

I added some highlights with metallic paint at the end to give the painting some more depth, adding another texture when the light hits it. This painting was definitely a challenge for me but it was great to refresh my acrylic painting skills!