black velvet portrait
one of the first newskool believers in oldskool black velvet - so very honored that Trinidad James has a Gil Corral black velvet. the project was from more than a couple years ago, but he recently shared his support in the decor maine article from last year.
gracias, hombre.
it’s HERE! in all its amazingness.
john, it’s really beautiful. and such an honor to see your vision realized, and to work with you to help realize this vision. check the blog post just prior to this one for more details.
and the trading cards even come with a puzzle to assemble on the back and BUBBLE GUM ! no nostalgia was overlooked ♥️
gil corral - painting john grant on black velvet, summer 2020. photo by lauryn sophia
last spring. spring of 2020, we had a really wonderful series of phone calls and texts with artist/musician john grant. we talked about black velvet paintings of course, and also growing up the midwest (coco’s formative years were in iowa and indiana), growing up an outsider, growing up going to state fairs and other common experiences we shared. within all of that he shared his vision for the album he was working on and the album cover art that he just knew gil would be the one who could do it with the quality he desired. the result of all of this is not only four pieces of super beautiful, rich, FULL of feeling velvets on one super incredible musical oeuvre d’art, but a warm friendship to boot.
the album releases june 25! can’t wait to get our hands of a physical copy. check out some of what john and his record label did with the images and packaging and all of it, i won’t even try to describe - truly a picture/black velvet painting is worth a thousand words….!
oh and last august, when the lauryn sophia of decor maine magazine was here at the hogfarm taking photos for the upcoming article, gil was working on the finishing touches of john - you can see it in the article - and i’ll add more behind the scene peeks here:
at gil’s easel - in biddeford maine, right before sending them to reykjavik iceland
gil corral - painting john grant on black velvet, summer 2020. photo by lauryn sophia
a couple monday's back i received what i almost took as a joke request. except that they sounded quite serious.
the folks at pretty bird international needed a black velvet portrait of eric wareheim for his birthday...and his birthday was at the end of the week.
wow.
but it happened and we did it and it was awesome and such an honor.
and i did not sleep, or really eat for that matter, for many many hours that week.
learn a little more about eric here and here
and absolutely check out pretty bird international as well. they're involved with lots of truly tremendous things
including this:
again, truly an honor.
Peace,
Gil
