Painting the Wedding

We’ve engaged our good friend Flora Bowley, an absolutely amazing painter, to create a commissioned painting for our wedding day. She did this for some other friends, Rachel and Tyson, and the result was absolutely gorgeous.

This is Flora: (her fiance Lane teaches capuiera and she is an amazing contact improv and yoga practitioner)

Oh. Sorry. Here she is right side up.

And these are some of the amazing pieces she has created.

Her work is abstracted, but heavily based on natural forms. You see a lot of leaves and pods, gorgeous flowers peeking in and out of the depths. Occasionally a word or two surfaces, speaking to the mood of the moment of its creation.

It’s very layered work. Literally. When staring at one of her pieces you get constant glimpses of the painting that lies beneath the painting you are looking at, going back and back, and others nearly completely obscured. Its an endless source of mystery and contemplation.

You can look at more of her work at her website.

For a while, we were “storing” one of Flora’s pieces on our wall while Morgan’s sister Kira was off on a trip, and I’ll never forget the first time that I wandered into the living room to discover Parker (our roommate Holly’s 8 year old son) perched on the edge of the couch just staring at the piece. He’d cock his head slightly when he noticed something new, and I think I watched him for a solid two minutes and he never moved a muscle. He was totally engrossed.

Her work is incredibly special. We can’t wait for you to see it.

Our friends Tyson and Rachel had her come to their wedding and set up a canvas on an easel and paint throughout the wedding. It was so much fun to stop by her little station in the grass and watch the painting take shape, incorporating details of their wedding, including the candles they used and the pair of swans that swam in the lake nearby. After the wedding she took the piece home and completed it before presenting it to them. And now it hangs on their wall in their media room- looking gorgeous and reminding them of their day.

We, along with a group of their friends, contributed to the commission cost of the painting as our wedding gift to Rachel and Tyson and it felt great- contributing to one friend in order to gift another pair of friends a work of art they will cherish throughout their lives.

So, when people started asking us about registries and showers and stuff like that we discovered that we didn’t really want dishes or pots and pans…we’ve arrived at an age where we’ve already collected most of the exact right sort of things that we want for right now.

But we would want something truly unique and special to commemorate our day and our marriage. Something that would grace every home we ever lived in.

So if you would like to contribute to Flora’s commission for our wedding painting, we think that would be lovely. We’ll sort out details for that in a bit.

Either way, we hope you’ll enjoy the opportunity to watch this amazing artist capture our special day in a whole new way.