Getting All Artsy-Fartsy!

I haven't been taking much in the line of new photos recently. The hot and humid weather has been keeping walks short and to the point. But thanks to PicMonkey, any old photo can be tinkered with. I had a blast playing with all their special effects!

Today, I Am An Art Critic!

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.......I went to college and received a degree in Fine Art, with minors on Art History and Anthropology.( I soon learned I couldn't make a living at it, but that's another story.) Today I am going to use some of those long dormant learnings and talk about a piece of art I recently acquired. While the title of my blog post mentions being a critic, I actually only have praise.

Let me start with a close-up so we all can see this beauty. It may even look familiar......

Have you seen this before someplace maybe?

For a long time, I have wanted to get one of Mary's photographs. The trouble was I could never pick which one. I am sure you have all seen her beautiful work over on her blog Tales From the Back Road. When she recently posted about how she and her equally talented husband had teamed up to put custom frames around her photos, I knew it was time to jump!

Back in March, Mary had posted about Castle Dome mine. In that post is where I first saw the photograph above. It had instant appeal for me! When I saw she had chosen this shot as one  to put a custom frame on, I figured it was fate! Those little keys attached to the frame were the icing on the cake! I just love all the symbolism you can read into this if you are so inclined. For me, it brought to mind the old saying "When one door closes, another opens....." and in this case you even have the keys to make it happen. It also brought to mind lyrics from an Eagles song, Already Gone, where they sing "So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains, And we never even know we have the key ".  So for me, this piece gives an uplifting message about being in control of your own destiny and that we each hold the key to to our own happiness. I may be reading a lot into a pretty lavender door knob, but that's what several semesters of art history will do to you, even all these years later.

Another thing I love about this photo which you really can't discern from your computer screen, is how perfectly Mary focused on the knob itself. The picture has a very distinctive three dimensional quality to it when you see it in real life. It looks like you could grab that knob!

 The frame is beautifully made and stained. Even the back is nicely finished and comes ready to hang. In my house, I have a room with a southwestern decorating theme, and the colors in this photo matched so well! As you can see in the photo above, the colors in the photo really pop against my wall color! It really turned out to be a perfect match for the whole room.

                                        Even the comforter on the bed is a perfect match....

                                                              The curtains, too!

                                                          The long view..............

Another thing I would like to mention is that the original version Mary and Al had put together was in an 11x14 format which too large for my chosen spot. Mary was happy to do a smaller 8x10 version for me, and Al made another frame. I really appreciated the extra work to make it just right for me.

If you are like me, and have been considering one of these beauties, I wouldn't wait too long! When Mary takes her collection to one of the summer art shows, they will disappear just like that! Snap!

I undertook this post because of how absolutely pleased I am with my print and frame. I told Mary I wanted to blog about it, but she did not ask me to. These are just my own personal observations on something that made me happy!