Tortoise

I saw this picture in House Beautiful while pregnant with my daughter:

I am a huge Miles Redd fan but being a painter of course I noticed this table, love.  Miles is great at directing a finish in a beautiful but unexpected way.  I love that of course we know a table made entirely of tortoise could never exist in nature but the quality of the painting is excellent and so unexpected.

Well, my parents had this table hanging around and they gave me the go ahead to take it over.

At the time I thought I would paint this for Alice's room but I had her 2 weeks early and here we are.  After seeing the Miles table I became obsessive about tortoise shell and scoured the internet and various books for pictures of antique boxes.  The ones that I liked best I found on 1st Dibs in the shop of none other than Karla Katz who is a local antiques dealer and neighbor.

So these pictures have been pinned up in my studio ever since and when time/insomnia presents itself I would work on said table.

And here we are 2 and a half years later.  Tortoise table in it's finished form.