Okay, seeing a trend here. When I heard Honen’s was looking for artists to paint a piano I figured I was a shoe-in for charity artwork like that. And I was! I was one of five artists who were selected to paint five pianos. I had one month to paint this stand-up piano that would live at Art’s Commons to be played by the public. Terrified and excited I met my piano for the first time, and formulated what I would do. Of course I had a pretty good idea based on the other instruments I’d painted.
I knew right away what I had to do. I went and purchased all my supplies to start immediately. For this project I was painting along side three of the other pianos at ACAD. It is a little nerve-wracking to be diving into this project while seeing what your peers are doing at the same time. But after a week of painting, I was the only one started….and I just had to keep going.
I would spend two or three days a week on site painting the piano, mostly by myself. On occasion I would have visitors come in, curious as to what I was doing. I even had people come in and play my piano, or others in the room. As I painted, my daughter came up with the perfect name for the piano…’Clementine’, and it just stuck. All while I painted her I thought about her name, and it made sense because the base colour for the piano was a bright shocking orange.
My swirls, lines, and dots danced around the piano, and of course I was always listening to music. I painted not only the primary surfaces (all the ones you can see), but many of the secondary surfaces (like the back, under the keys, and inside the top hinged area). Someone asked me why I did that if many of the places won’t get seen, and my answer was “I like to have little surprises in my work…most people wouldn’t…so I will”.
My last day, as I was prepping Clementine with a couple of layers of clear varnish, I was listening to some quiet music, and thinking about her going and people enjoying playing her. One of the Security Guards came in to visit me while I was painting “Are you crying?” she asked. I smiled “Sometimes I get a bit emotional about the projects I do”.
On the day they revealed Clementine and the other pianos, I was thrilled that John Kumira Parker played a jazz piece on my piano. Have a look at my video showing the entire process while listening to John play.