Live Event Paintings

I paint oil paintings, live, at wedding receptions and events, anywhere in the world. Click my profile to find my email, or call (206) 382-7413.

Thursday, July 25, 2013

Garza-Ginther Wedding Reception, The Ruins, Seattle


This couple, both local television producers, tied the knot in a very private ceremony in Paris, in July. But they wanted to bring home a bit of Europe for their family and friends, so they held a stateside reception at The Ruins in Seattle. This hidden venue is tucked away in an old industrial space. Knowing the address, one finds a concrete building with a non-descript metal door, and a doorbell. But once inside, we are transported, as it seems, to a villa in France. There are vine draped courtyards, and room after room of elegant furnishings and art. The most formal of the dining rooms is framed in gilded trim, and features floor to ceiling murals which took artist Jennifer Carrasco three years to create.
 This is the third time I’ve painted in this room, and I hope to do it again. The place is magic.
Having dressed my canvas in some semblance of Ms. Carrasco’s nature scenes, half a dozen chandeliers, and some Venetian lamp posts, I was ready by the time the guests arrived to paint the most important features: the people. As they trickled in from cocktails in the adjacent room (to the right of my canvas), I caught a six year old girl peeking through the curtains. She was the first. Then came the couple’s teen age daughters, preteen son, and the array of parents, grandparents, siblings, and friends. Off in the distance, behind the cake, the Prague-born pianist Luke Doubravsky tickles all the keys. And shimmering in the center are the sophisticated couple. 

Monday, July 1, 2013

The Duval-Thommes Wedding, Santa Barbara Historical Museum, June 29, 2013


Santa Barbara has always been a city of romance. Now it is a city of weddings.
I set up my easel in the north corner of the courtyard of the Santa Barbara Historical Museum, under the veranda’s golden chalice vines. The space was elegantly and rustically decorated, much as it might have been in the Mexican colonial era, when some of these adobe buildings first baked in the California sun. A fountain burbled at the far end of the yard, and a light breeze darted under the old timbers. The band was just setting up, and catering brought me lemonade.
The couple were married in the mid afternoon in the old Presdio chapel, two blocks away. A mariachi band then lead the guests to the courtyard of the Casa Covarrubias for cocktails. From there, they made their way to the dinner tables within my view.  At 6:00 the couple made their grand entrance into this larger museum courtyard as husband and wife.
By that time, I had painted the setting—with the sky a little darker, in anticipation of evening— and was beginning to lay in the figures of the guests.
But the couple still had not been told that I would be there painting, and eventually the bride’s grandmother brought them to my corner to see what I was doing. It was her gift to them. I painted them quickly as they watched, and then they returned to their guests, delighted. 
For all the work of gifted planners, designers, and other wedding professionals, what makes a wedding wonderful are the couple and their friends and families. This was a convivial company, and they joyfully filled the dance floor, shaking brightly painted maracas until the grand exit at 10 pm.  
I was finished an hour before they left.
And when they left, they left in grand style, as you can see in this little vid from my phone:

Inset photo by Melissa Musgrove.  Marvelous wedding design by Tonya Szele of Soinge Productions