Around The World Before Age One

For our grandchildren, on each birthday, I create a painting.  I was straining my brain over an idea for this one.  Thanks to Amira's Great Aunt Linda for saying "It can't be that hard to come up with something, the child has been all around the world and she's not even a year old yet!" for it was this comment which sparked the concept. 

AROUND THE WORLD BEFORE AGE ONE   mixed media on cradled panel   12" x 16"

The story behind the painting is this; Amira was born in Banff, December 9th, 2011 on a night before a full moon.  To meet her Dad's family, she had her first flight to Toronto in February 2012.  In March, she and Laura joined us in Palm Springs.  And, right on the heels of that trip, she and her Mom went to Amsterdam, where they meet up with her Dad.  It was from there that she got to go to Paris!  In July, Laura, Adam and Amira came to the International Saltiel Family Reunion in New York City.  In September, her Mother took her to San Francisco and in November the young family all went on a reconnaissance mission to Columbia, Maryland (the oriole) because that's where they will be moving to in February, 2013.

     

Notice that the moon is also the earth?

At the end of day one I had found (glory be to the Internet) all the icons I wanted and was satisfied with the arrangement of them, but I couldn't quit without adding some colour!  The next day I painted what you see below ...

Getting the colour on

... and permanently affixed the components ...

  

I've enlarged the Eiffel Tower - it needed to be bigger

At the end of the third day the painting looked like this ...

Completely coloured in

It was at the stage above that I decided the Disney fairy was not at all what I wanted for the piece, so I created my own Amira, caricature fairy.  On day four I fine tuned and finished the painting ...

(same as the first image at the top)

In keeping with her jet setting lifestyle, Amira spent her first birthday on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.  Bill and I had the pleasure of being there to celebrate the occasion ...

The gifting; Laura and Amira

... and when Amira kissed her painting ...

... my heart soared.

Now that we're home, I'm thinking I want to add some Kauai sand and a few teeny, tiny shells around the base of the palm tree!