"Straight to Your Heart"

Have you ever looked at a work of art that seemed to reach directly into your body and affect you from the inside?  Something that reaches "Straight to Your Heart"?

Elizabeth's 30th birthday present did exactly that, and now that it is finally hanging on the wall in our bedroom, we wanted to share a bit about how it ended up meaning way more than we initially thought.

We have a nasty little habit of going on major vacations and coming home with new art for our home.  It started pretty small; proofs of a zebra striped lion and a sea horse from an art fair in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.  A set of hand painted greeting cards from the Portland Saturday Market.  A multicolored pineapple print from the Aloha Stadium Swap Meet on Oahu.  Browsing through art fairs and galleries is a pretty consistent staple on our vacations and it seemed to culminate with convincing each other to come home from Waikiki with an original work by Chris DeRubeis that found a home in the dinning area of our condo.

Art on the walls of Casa Fiorani Thoma

In July, we spent a week on the big island of Hawaii during our last big trip before beastie arrives.  In addition to swimming with dolphins, hiking through volcanic craters, and watching amazing sunsets, we also spent some time browsing the various galleries in and around Kona.  We were pretty set on not coming home with another big piece on this trip, but we still love to look.

A stroll through the "Pacific Art Gallery" brought us upon a collection of canvases and prints by Fabio Napoleoni that really grabbed our attention.  Fabio uses vivid colors and characters to capture what he describes as "Nostalgia, sorrow, and moments that lift the soul".

"The Biggest Gift of All"
(http://www.fabionapoleoni.com)

A worker in the gallery quickly shared the tag line "What the Heart wants and the Heart needs can be found in a Fabio' painting."

"Good Things Come to Those Who Wait"

She also shared that Fabio's art is inspired by and follows the emotional journey of his daughter being born with a critical heart defect that left her in the hospital multiple times with somewhat dire prospects.  She recovered against the odds, and as she did Fabio's work became more colorful and uplifting.

"I Want the World to Know"

While we LOVED the work, the woman in the shop was much more interested in a foreign couple purchasing a far more expensive painting to really pay us much mind, and we pretty quickly convinced ourselves that we didn't need another piece of art, no matter how compelling they were.

"On My Mind"

After returning from the amazing trip (if you haven't been to Hawaii, go there, now!), Chris was coming up empty on birthday gift ideas for Elizabeth, and kept coming back to the idea of purchasing one of the works we saw in the gallery in Kona.  After stewing about the idea for a couple weeks, Chris reached out to a few galleries with Fabio's work to see what was even available.  It was REALLY hard to find galleries that had much of Fabio's work in stock, given the limited production.  A print of "Good Things Come to Those Who Wait" that we saw in Kona sold the day before Chris called the gallery and most of the other prints were limited editions and simply weren't available anywhere.  What seemed like bad timing ended up bringing Chris back to the first canvas print that caught his eye in the gallery in Kona.  After wrestling with the thought that Elizabeth would yell at him for spending too much, Chris decided he didn't care, the print was perfect, and he pulled the trigger on the purchase.

Print in hand, Chris was thrilled, but slightly annoyed he had to wait so long to give it to Elizabeth, get it framed and put it up on the wall.  Then a week or so before Elizabeth's birthday, we had the second trimester ultrasound and found out about beastie's defect.  Neither of us had any idea how much meaning the painting would have for us when we were standing in the gallery in Kona months earlier, but this painting reached straight into our hearts and wouldn't let go.  It perfectly capture the sorrow, the hope, and the love we experienced on our journey so far with our little beastie, and now means more than we ever knew it would, or could.

After things settled down a bit, we found a local fame shop to get it professionally framed;  Michaels was simply not going to do for this one!  It seemed like we went through a hundred fame options, but we found a frame and accent we thought we liked, and began the waiting process for the job to be done.  The final product looks incredible, and looks amazing hanging over our bed.  We can't wait to share the story behind the piece with the little beastie when he is old enough!

"Straight to Your Heart" Limited Edition # 41 / 77