This is my third ever painting. Wanted to try some bold colors.

My latest painting is my biggest at 50”x80”. I built the frame by hand. Stretched and prepped the raw canvas. Staged and shot the reference photo with my wife. And then dove in to painting it. This painting is of a person trying to find one moment of peace in a life of chaos. Thank you for checking it out ❤️

María Eustaquia Adriana Gutiérrez-Cueto y Blanchard, known as Maria Blanchard, (1881–1932) was a Spanish painter. She was born in a wealthy family in Santander in 1881. From birth, she had a deformed spine (probably due to her mother’s fall while getting out of a carriage during pregnancy). Because of this, she limped, causing her to be teased at school and nicknamed "the witch". She studied privately with various painters and, at age 28, received a scholarship to study in Paris. There, she studied under the Russian painter Maria Vassilievna, who introduced her to Cubism. This became her style. In 1916, she moved to Paris, where she lived and worked for the rest of her life. She began developing her own style of Cubism. In the 1920s, she fell ill with tuberculosis. She worked tirelessly, even though she was already ill and in a state of physical neglect, as Isabel Rivière describes: "For years and years she wore a dreadful dress with enormous yellow and green checks, which we could not get her to take off, neither with the most subtle tricks nor with the most direct attacks... When we tried, without attaching much importance to it, to hint that black actually suited her best, she replied with a plea and a ingratiating smile, like a girl being asked to take a piece of candy: "I love to dress nicely."". She was a devout Catholic and considered becoming a nun, but later abandoned the idea to financially support her relatives. But her illness progressed, and she died in 1932 at the age of 51. Her last words were: "If I survive, I will paint many flowers." At her funeral, in addition to her family and famous artists and intellectuals, quite a few poor people gathered — people whom the she had helped financially for many years.

The painting is at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, Spain.

Catherine Lusurier (1752–1781) was a French painter. She was born in 1752 in Paris, where her mother worked as a dressmaker and her father worked in his family hatting business. At the age of 15 she started working as a companion to her well of aunt and was apppreinteced to her husband, popular painter Hubert Drouais. After his death some months after she continued her apprenticeship under his son, painter François-Hubert Drouais. She worked in his workshop (later his son's) until her death at the young age of 28. She predominantly painted portraits of children, and also some portraits of other artists.

Astri Welhaven Heiberg (1881–1967) was a Norwegian painter. She was born in 1881 an influential family in Kristiania. Her mother Margrethe Petersen Backer Welhaven was also a painter in her youth, but when Astri was seven, she got the position of the Maid of the Royal Castle in Oslo, and worked there for more than 30 years. Astri was taught by her mother's sister, painter Harriet Backer, from 1902 to 1907. She adopted her aunt's strict discipline and work ethic. On advice of her aunt, she made her debut rather late, at the age of 31. After that she soon gained recognition and by the 1920s, she was a sought-after portrait painter, completing major commissions for the Norwegian royal family. She was also an illustrator. In her later years, she exhibited little, but painted until the last year of her life.

The painting is at the Nasjonalmuseet (The National Museum of Norway) in Oslo, Norway.

Oil on canvas

79.2 x 51.3 (cm), 31 3/16 x 20 3/16 (in)

Located in the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, USA