x factors

Many times when someone buys a painting, particularly a landscape, it's because they somehow relate to the location or they collect the genre or they just like a good painting. Usually it's the former. People respond to a place because it reminds them of their backyard, maybe it's where they grew up or someplace once visited and now ingrained in their list-of-favs psyche. Once in a while, though, a painting just gets to a lot of people for reasons unknown. I'm not a still life guy... never do them, I've probably done 5 in my life as finished paintings. But while painting in the Callaway event we were invited to various homes to focus mostly on our hosts gardens. As I toured the house, there was a pile of the blue vases on a mantle, in a style that I was later told is known as blue willow. When I say a pile I mean a big bunch of large vases, all cobalt and white and fairly ornate, this painting includes about a third of the lot. The owner of the home graciously chose to buy this painting in advance of the show but the powers that be wanted to put it up anyway and even though there was a sold dot on the card, I could have resold this painting about 6 times. Why? I don't really know. It's the x factor. Maybe I should paint more still lifes. Know anyone with blue willow vases? Of course I left there without taking one picture of the place..... note to self. D'OH! This is a 16x20 and I started it late in the day, mostly waiting for the sun to clock over the house so this little scene would get more daylight. I spent about 3 hours on it and then two days later, when it was fairly dry, I glazed down a lot of it to make it darker in the background and in the shadows.