- Oil on Gallery-Wrapped Canvas
- 60 cm x 80 cm (23.6 x 31.5 inches)
- Available
Hope Lion
Madrid is one of the "Mecca cities" for visual artists. With museums such as the Prado, Thyssen, and the Sorolla House, for starters, artists and art lovers are very happy indeed to visit the capitol of Spain. I myself visited Madrid in September 2013 and crammed in as many museum visits as I could during my stay there.
I did some drawings too, mostly in the famous Retiro Park. It was there that I saw an unusual bronze lion overlooking a man-made lake. I like his pose, in which his front legs stand still and straight, giving that so familiar regal look to the lion's stance. The hind legs, however, make one feel as if the lion had only just walked up to the edge and was about to pull in his lingering leg as he comes to a stop. It was not until I began to paint the sculpture onto a canvas that I realized that I saw more human leg anatomy in the extended leg of the lion than anything cat-like.
On the technical side, some years before I created a warm, orange-y campitura [tinted canvas] of asphaltum, a pigment that speaks to me, despite my saying that I am not an "orange" person. I had made a collage of an idea of this lion overlooking a regular forest on one side, but naked branches closer to him.
As I painted a sunset [a memory from Texas skies], I tried to leave most of this campitura visible. In fact, this original oil painting was created using only a minimal palette: basically purple and orange (and yellow), with a few neutrals thrown into the mix. Here are some detail shots of the painting "Hope," featuring the "King of the Beasts."
The sides are painted a solid dark warm brown and thus, may be hung with or without a frame, as you desire. However, I think the RIGHT frame would give the canvas a more finished look. As you like.