Red Shoes!

There’s No Place Like Home ©2008 Karen Mathison Schmidt
acrylic on 6 x 6 Gessobord • gloss varnish for protection & ease of cleaning
SOLD • private collection • Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

My husband and I took a trip to northern California last October to visit his parents, and on the way back down to my sister’s in Long Beach we stopped for a long overdue visit with a good friend of mine who now lives in San Francisco. While we were chatting and catching up (to the background music Paul was providing on our friend’s acoustic guitar, which she generously GAVE to him later when we were making our farewells!) with the bay window open to a view of a park across the winding street and the Golden Gate Bridge way, way, way in the distance, I noticed these patent leather shoes sitting on the floor right under the windowsill, like a little red sculpture, a gift to my friend from her friend. Just a reminder that “there’s no place like home.”

Work in progress photos:


I tried to keep the brush strokes nice and loose, with a sense of fun. After I blocked in the composition (photo 1) I put glazes of color in the 3 main areas of the wall, the floor and the shoes, choosing green (the complement of red on the color wheel) as the underpainted color for the shoes (photo 2). Then finishing with layers of color and more detail, until the painting says, “ok, enough - I’m done!”