Complimenting VanGogh

Studio Akimbo
559 658-2663
info@trowzersakimbo.com

Artist's Comments

In 2021 my wife was hospitalized due to a blood clot that developed in one of her lungs. The medical team opted to perform a procedure, where Betty remained awake, while they traveled through her wrist and up a vein to her lung, there removing the clots with a tiny catheter. The surgery went wrong. I won't go into the details, but suffice it to say, the botched procedure devastated her health, requiring her to be air-lifted to UCSF, in San Francisco, where they were better equiped to deal with her newly created health issues, which included need of open heart surgery.
 
While, due to Covid-19 restrictions, I was barred from being with Betty at the first hospital, but San Franciso (SF) had reduced Covid cases to such a degree, UCSF's visitor policy allowed a family member to be there, with the patient, during their stay. I quickly threw together a bag and traveled up to SF, where it turned out, I would reside for 4 months, while the doctors there successfully conquered all of my wife's new health challenges, one by one. To my great relief, I was able to be at Betty's bedside each day, all day, to support her and help manage her care and treatment.
 
Betty's procedures, surgeries and healing required an excessive amount of rest on her part, to gain necessary strength, and she spent many hours sleeping to accomplish this. During her slumber, when not consulting with her medical team, I sat idle in a bedside chair. Accustomed to creating art every day, I looked to utilize these short periods of solitary time in creating something. Although I hadn't brought any of my analog art materials with me, I remembered I'd' carried my iPad along, which provided all I needed to create, digitally, in the apps on the tablet. Seeking subject matter, I recalled I'd always wanted to attempt personal interpretations of famous works of art, but to date, had never picked up the challenge. I decided on an abstracted interpretation of Vincent Van Gogh's, 15 Sunflowers in a Vase. I quickly located a good copy of the painting through a Google search. I've worked with many different iPad image creation/editing apps over the years, but this time decided to utilize the Adobe Fresco application. I hadn't spent much time with this fairly new app and saw this as an opportunity to put it through it's paces.
 
I began working in the same palette Van Gogh had utilized, but quickly realized how abstract Vincent;s work was already and realized if my interpretation was to be quickly recognized as a new take, I'd need to make a drastic change in color. I decided to substitute complimentary or close to complementary colors for every color in Vincent's palette. The end result was accomplished over countless short sessions, through good times and bad, as Betty and her highly skilled medical team fought to bring her back to physical health. I'm happy to report, Betty's treatment was completely successful, we're home again now, where Betty works hard at physical therapy, making great progress along her long road back to full strength and agility.