The Lavender Room

My friends, Dr. Hugh Cassiere who is a critical care physician at Northwell Health’s North Shore University Hospital and his wife and childhood friend, Cindy Cassiere, asked me to make a painting for a special room in the hospital to be called “The Lavender Room”.

This room is to be used by medical professionals who’s physical and mental toll have been effected by the Covid-19 pandemic. The space was created to help the staff relax and recharge. My contribution was to create a painting that was calming and would fit in with the vision for the room.

Cindy was instrumental is fundraising and was also able to convince the TV show “George to the Rescue” that this was a worthwhile cause. The show featuring the Lavender Room and telling the story of the doctors and nurses at Northwell Hospital will be told on an episode of George to the Rescue on NBC on October 17,2020. Here is the trailer.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CGQhaMopHH9/

I knew that I wanted the main color in this piece to be lavender. I used ochre for highlights in the petals because it looks like sunshine and is also the complement of the color lavender. Blue is also a calming color and will remind people of the sky outside and so it became the background.

The ochre petals form a Fibonacci spiral which I use in many of my paintings and wrote about in the blog post called “Athos” in more detail. I used a darker purple glaze on the lower right side of the canvas only. This is to bring the viewer out of darkness and move towards the lighter left hand side and into the golden spiral of happiness and light.

This painting uses both alla prima techniques (painting wet into wet paint) and of painting wet over dry paint and the use of glazes. It is a large painting and measures 30 x 30 inches.

Here are a few photos to show the process: