Buying A Teil Duncan Painting For The Anniversary
As of Monday, John and I have been married for seven years. Or a hand and two fingers, as Clara likes to joke (“what is seven?… A HAND AND TWO FINGERS!” *maniacal laughter*).
As you can imagine, when you get married on 7/7/07, your seventh anniversary feels like a special one. The golden birthday of anniversaries, if you will. We went to Hawaii for our fifth anniversary, and have consistently thought we’d end up going somewhere excellent for our seventh (Australia is the ultimate dream – perhaps for our tenth – but for lucky seven we were thinking about somewhere in the Caribbean). But as this summer approached we realized the last thing we hoped to do was load everyone up on an airplane. We are certainly still adjusting to life with two kids, so we chose to save some of our trip money for next year when we will hopefully feel more settled/brave/wanderlusty, and we picked up a painting with the rest of it.
At $850 it was a LARGE splurge for us, but we figured getting a painting that we both enjoyed (of the beach no less) as an anniversary gift to ourselves was sort of a nod to taking a vacation without loading up the pack & play and pacing the aisle of the plane waiting for someone to fall asleep. And we hope to have it forever. Heck, perhaps it’ll hang on the walls of Clara’s house someday.
It is a 30 x 30″ painting by Teil Duncan, whom we have been giant geeky fans of for a while. We resisted our initial instinct to get a smaller (less pricey) print, and chose that our first large original painting would be the best seventh anniversary present we could think of. And when it arrived, it was even more glorious in person than it was online. We had it up on the wall in about five minutes. Truly, these photos cannot capture half the magic of an in-person stare-session.
It looks strong next to our blue front door, and it is one of those scenes that you can look at for hours.
As for what wall color you see on the wall behind it, it is our go-to neutral paint color: Edgecomb Gray by Benjamin Moore.
Every time I walk by our new painting I notice something else. We even caught Clara admiring it (“I like that pink chair! We need a pink beach chair!”) and Teddy’s eyes catch it over my shoulder when I carry him up the stairs sometimes. Burger has not shown any interest yet, but there is still time…
The funny thing about hanging it in our foyer is that we realized we have two other paintings in there too.
Remember these smaller ones by our friend Lesli? They all have those soft blues and bright whites that make them feel related, but not too matchy. And they are all of things we enjoy: the beach, John’s Granny’s house, and Burgdorf Goodman himself.
You might remember that we originally hung our Samantha French print in the hall next to the door, so we carried that into the office and held it up over the desk. We in fact tried our anniversary painting there first, but ended up liking it better in the hall, so that switch was fairly plain to make. It is pleasant to have some art on that wall of the office too.
While hanging that over the desk, we realized we have a few more small paintings on the shelves in there (one of our last house, one of a pear that I found for $4 at an estate sale, one of two bees from Etsy). We consistently hoped to slowly amass some “real” art, so it is pleasant to realize that over time you can inch up the ol’ collection, both with inexpensive finds and a splurge or two, and suddenly you have a hand and two fingers worth of it.
And of course we have all of Clara’s creations on the cork board over her desk. Priceless.
I think no matter how straightforward you know nail holes are to spackle (so straightforward! we have done it a thousand times!) there is this instinct in a new house or a freshly painted room to hold off on hanging art for a while. I do not know what that phenomenon is (Nail Hole Neurosis?) but we certainly are not immune. This is a quite real issue people. Simply kidding, but truly, it took us TEN MONTHS to add some nail holes after painting our bedroom!
It is weird that we hold back on the whole art-hanging thing when we know how much it can take a room from house to home (our bedroom feels 100% more us than it did with blank walls). I am certainly inspired to get some stuff hung in our upstairs hallway and a few other walls of our bedroom now. What the heck are we waiting for?
And to all of you other 7/7 anniversary peeps, hope it was a glad one!
