One of the best parts of painting commissions is when a client suggests an idea that you hadn’t thought of yet. 

I mean, who would’ve thought that a baby giraffe and a baby octopus could be friends? As it turns out they are.

And this painting also has a story. Would you like me to tell you? Oh, ok I will.

I live in a lovely, peaceful neighborhood, on a very quiet street in Los Angeles. Very often when I print my postage from home, I also leave my ready to ship package outside on my front stoop for the mailman to pick up. I think it may have been one of those weeks, you know the kind, the one where things just don’t go quite as easily as you’d hoped... because I opened my front door to check on if my package had been picked up, only to find that yes indeed it had, but not by the mailman.  An empty, torn open priority mail box was carefully set on my stoop.  Yup, someone had stolen my newly finished commission painting.

You can only imagine how heartbreaking that was. I mean it’s bad enough when something is stolen from you, but something that you hand made especially for someone else. To add insult to injury the client I was making this painting for was actually giving it as a gift to her boyfriend.  So, so disheartening. And honestly, I’m sure the person who went through the trouble of stealing it was probably disappointed too. I mean, hey they got a painting. What are they going to do with that? Which is precisely what I wonder. I never found the painting. What I think happened is that someone grabbed it off the stoop, carried it around the corner, ripped open the box and discarded it, the box that is. Someone else must have found the empty box and kindly returned it to me.

Where did this painting end up?

I was pretty upset for a while and then I had to find a way to feel better about it all. First, my very understanding client allowed me to create another piece for her. So, I decided that maybe, just maybe this painting brightened someone’s day. I mean if someone was so down on their luck that they had to steal a priority shipping box off of someone’s stoop, they probably could use some cheering up, (along with a sever reprimanding about how wrong it is to steal) Maybe the person who stole it kept it, or if they tossed it aside maybe someone else found it and it brightened their day. I sincerely hope what I hope for all of my paintings, that they find their way to someone’s home and add a little joy to their lives. 

Hope it brings a smile to you today too, because they’re so cute aren’t they? And the octopus clearly loves the giraffe.