Dready of Cotton Tree Hotel – 60×40 – Original Commission on Canvas
this dready was an amazing commission for me to do; grand and big and intricate and challenging … and in the end very beautiful.
it started with a sneaky stay at Cotton Tree Hotel – because the commission was a secret – which is unique, in Cayman; there is no other true boutique hotel; and it is very very nice …
private cottage, private chef, private time …
Cotton Tree wasnt new to me, been there many times, but this time we tried to absorb it all … photographed everything … worked mentally on the elements that would be included …
there is a heron in the top right of this dready that is actually from my very first bit of work for cotton tree, years ago when they opened years ago – it was a card called ‘the elements of cotton tree’
the concept took me a long time to ‘imagine’ … I had had the idea very early on but I couldn’t make the next step and translate, visualize how I was going to get that onto canvas – this idea of something that was part plan, part elevation, part something else all together …
And then it happened with a simple thing – I’d drawn the ‘plan’ of the property, the two shades of green, the beach, the shades of the sea – and one day i turned the image 180 degrees and flipped it so that I was looking at the plan of the property from the road …
simple as that and my head clicked and I saw it all … then began to draw the cottages as if I were looking at them from the sea – and drew the ‘elements’ from the view, the angle of them I’d felt was best.
… It was that simple flipping of the plan part of the drawing, that suddenly did it for me – that transcended the image from nothing, into a dready.
The last finishing touch, that flourish I can’t take credit for alone, because it came from the final chat with the people who’d commissioned the art in the first place … the poinciana tree, in full bloom, in the middle of the drawing finishes it, lifts it to another level and although I might have drawn it, it wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for the wonderful process of how doing a dready commission works … the interaction with the client and their input into the finished product.
happiness …