My Best Friend Lives Next Door

This is a composite of two images. One was a window looking out my mother’s house to the house next door. The other was my wife reading by a window in Kenya.

The challenge was to paint the transparent effect of light on the window screen, as well as to retain the feminine feeling of the curtains while keeping them in the shadow to frame the window next door. I also wanted to create a feeling of summer, of shadows from trees overhead and blue sky reflecting on the wall. I also wanted to give the impression that flowers were below the windows, without actually including them. If I had painted them in they would distract from the center of interest seen through the window. The other challenge was making sure that the perspective and distance of the second image looked plausible through the window.

When I finished, I saw more than one story in the painting. The one I like best is the idea of one person just happening to see her (or his) friend reading a book next door. I wanted to make it feel like love. (The other stories generated by the dark curtains have more ominous overtones, which I didn’t intend.)