“Study” for Fisher Mural Commission,  Lisa Dawn Gold © 2004

   It was a chance meeting that introduced me to the sister-in-law of a top 100 art collector and patron I’d known for a long time in NYC.  My client was truly in love with the forest and all aspects of it.  Her deep appreciation for nature inspired lofty ambitions for this large scale work (3 canvases 12’ x 16’).  Essentially in her newly renovated home, she wanted to feel as though she was actually in the forest.  After the work was finished and installed, with the mural covering all surfaces of the room, ceiling and all, people would comment that it felt like it was about to rain.

     I’d been ask to paint a forest and yet painting trees was extremely tedious for myself.  The challenge was to make the focus on the whole and less the potential tedium.  I set out first in taking this commission to see what every artist before me in the history of art had done with the subject.  I then went into the forest to see the original source since all artist had translated life into art.  I took several thousand photographs and did my own intensive study of the subject before commencing the painting.  It was this study and a small sketch that impressed the client enough to have me to the commission. 

         In the end, I felt as though all of art history had displayed itself in different passages of the mural.   The commission had reminded that, though engrossed in making sculpture, I loved to paint.  After completing this commission, I went back to NYC and artistically focused on painting.

Silo mural model