Wizard Of Oz Painting

I just finished creating an auction piece for the Big Brothers Big Sisters Gala event in January 2015. This piece is called “The Power Was There All Along” and is mixed medium on Canvas 24X36. One of the mediums I used in this particular piece is 80 Carats of genuine red ruby. I wanted to do something exceptional with this pre-debut piece that would pave the way for the other pieces in the series.

This Piece begs to ask “What if Dorothy know she had the power all along?”

I’ve always been fascinated with popular fairytale and folklore and have been planning on doing a full series using elements from the stories. Until now, I wasn’t necessarily sure how I would portray the characters. All of my artwork has to have some kind of empowering message for it to have the emotional drive that is necessary for me to create.

Since a lot of the old fairy tales have trials and tribulations that the character has to face before their growth in the end, I was having a difficult time putting the pieces together in my mind. They were a little more dark and troubling than empowering which is the common message in my pieces.

Why start with a Wizard of Oz painting? The Gala for 2015 is themed “A night in Oz,” which was the perfect opportunity for me to take the series from the conceptual stage to reality. Over a period of a couple months, I researched and sketched out several ideas that ended up in the trash bin. One morning after a dream about riding a dinosaur into a field of corn, the idea came to me.

I realized that I was trying to stay true to the nature of the stories, yet the story was being read by me and my unique perspective and interpretation. Instead of researching what someone else thinks the story means, I simply needed to express what I got from the story and my own twist on it. Immediately, the piece came together in my mind and I couldn’t keep myself from creating it, which is a good sign for me.

The series will be called “A Modern Fairytale” and will debut in September of 2015. There will be twenty works in the collection in addition to the BBBS piece.

The crushed rubies were an idea that I had earlier when thinking about the series. I wanted to add elements that are not typically used in art, but that are essential in the stories. I find it challenging and fun to push myself beyond anything I’ve done before. Besides, who can pass up an opportunity to crush precious stones with a hammer.

Wizard Of Oz Painting was originally published on Rafi Was Here Studios