Apartment Art

We moved into a furnished apartment here in Scotland.  I don't know if it's common to have furnished apartments in the United States, I've only lived in houses.  Living in Poland and now in Scotland, furnished places are very common and they usually come with some kind of artwork.  

In our friends' places in Krakow, I'd noticed a lot of cool artwork.  The two apartments we had in Krakow had none whatsoever.  When we came to Scotland, the few pieces hanging on the wall were absolutely awful.  Of the 3 paintings, only one was acceptable.  Not something I would have picked myself, but it was allowed to stay on the wall. The other two may have been painted by the same artist (no, I didn't bother to even check) but they both had the same icky, muddy palettes.  One was a large framed rabbit that was just creepy and ugly.  Muddy colors, I think the rabbit had red eyes...maybe I'm making that up, I don't remember. We took it down and put it up in the storage area and hung our own stuff in it's place (a round Aztec calendar from Mexico and a large, wooden carved face from Jamaica that we call Bob), but there was still the ugly painting above the dining table.  

The painting above the dining table was a food painting.  Now, I am a big foodie, I love food, I love to eat, I love paintings of food and a painting of food above the dining table is something I would really like. But this painting was another that just looked like it was painted with mud.  I did take a picture of this one before it got banished to the attic space with the creepy rabbit. 

Now this is just bad.  It looks like maybe artichokes and garlic and a coffee/tea pot? Either way, blech. I wanted something brighter and more cheerful.  I'd love a food painting, but I wanted to do something quick and fairly easy and painless, as I have a lot of other projects I need to work on.  A good still life of food in that large size would take months.  So, I did this:

Queen Anne's Lace (or as it's called in the UK for some reason, Cow Parsley...) 30"x30" acrylic on canvas.  I think it looks much better than the muddy veggies that were there originally. 

I found this picture on Pinterest and thought it looked simple enough and I just wanted to do something quick so I kind of copied it.  I was originally going to do something even simpler, more a graphic dandelion with the little petals flying away but then it evolved into this.  Either way, I'm happy with the result and the more cheerful look it brings in. Good bye mud, hello sunshiney sky and flower :-)