40 YEARS MARRIED, TRAVELS, ADVENTURES AND HAPPINESS
To begin exploration of this colourful artwork, look centre to see Joie centre-left and Deej to the right with XL, Roman numerals 40: that’s where this artwork begins, forty years ago. The rest of the exploration is up to you following the guidelines below.
Among the unusual items in the painting:
Top lefthand side: I walked into a church in Rome. The first thing I saw was a painting of Mother Teresa holding a bowling bowl. When I looked closer, the bowling ball was actually the black hair of a child she was cradling.
In the centre, under a representation of Joie on our wedding day, two sides of a building: we were unable to find overnight accommodation in Bath so drove through village after village until we finally found a motel with a vacant room just as night fell. It was a shocking old-fashioned room with a plastic walled shower built into a corner. As we left the motel Joie looked up to see that we had stayed at a motel titled The Bug and Spider. Would we have stayed had we seen the sign before staying?
Bottom left, difficult to see but with a yellow cab to the bottom-right of a building: the building was the Waldorf Astoria in New York. After the first night in a smallish room where, throughout the night we could hearing thumping/banging which we ascertained to be the nearby lifts. After breakfast we went to reception and complained about the noise. Joie explained that we had travelled from Australia to stay at this famous hotel and that we were very disappointed with the experience. The receptionist said ‘leave it with me and I’ll see what we can do.’ When we returned from a day of sightseeing the receptionist said that they had given us a new room ten stories higher and hoped that we would find it to be more satisfactory.
When we opened the door to our new room we discovered it was, in fact, a suite of five rooms connected by a hallway/entrance: the bedroom had a king-size bed and the room was so big it would have easily held seven or eight king-size beds. Adjoining was a lounge of the same size with couches, writing desk, occasional tables and TV. There was a well-appointed bathroom, toilet and separate dressing/luggage room. We had been upgraded from a room that cost $450USD a night to a suite that cost $2800 USD a night.
Top right, a small sign in Japanese that reads Lost and Found.
Other places in the painting that we’ll leave it up to you to find:
- volcanic caldera lake and chapel roof in Santorini
- Magic Square, Sagrada Familia Barcelona
- Rialto Bridge, gondolier Venice
- Jumping salmon, falls of Shin; and dophins in the sea north of Aberdeen, Scotland
- Catacombs, Eiffel Tower on the Seine, 25th wedding anniversary ring purchased at Cartier on Champs Elysses Paris
- London bus and Tower Bridge
- Balinese Mask
- view of Istanbul
- a walled city, Monteriggioni, Italy
- Van Gogh’s bed in the asylum,
- broken bicyle, burnt-out Citroen and buildings, Oradour-sur-glane, France. Worth looking this up on the internet.
- front, prisoner of war camp, Dacau, Germany
- Vietnamese boatman, Hoi An
- house over lagoon can either both Maldives or Moorea Tahiti
- a poppy and Lone Pine, Gallipoli
- And just to the bottom-left of the pine, a neck sticking up, which we did not see (despite Joie getting me to drive around the entire lock: the Lock Ness Monster
- Joie and Derek wedding day; and, on motor bike in Cook Islands; and, Joie on a horse called Brownie in Cook Islands. In between us, a monkey that stole a packet of golf balls from my buggy while playing in KotaKinabalu
- Stingray, with which we swam, Fiji
- Statue of David, genitals, Florence
- cowboy at old film set museum Kebab and Monument Valley, Utah, US
- Uluru
- Mount Fuji and temple, Japan
- The Parthenon, Athens, Greece
- Caesars Palace Hotel sign, Las Vegas
- Elephant, South Africa
- Tiny island with temple off coast of Samoa
This artwork is not for sale, it hangs in our staircase hallway from which we view it every day. A visual reminder of our love, marriage, travels, adventures and happiness: all in one painting.
If you would like to have a similar unique memory-bank artwork for your home or office, contact me, and I will provide the list of items you will need to provide for the artwork to be created, including photographs, dates/times, and explanations of your adventures/misadventures, events, countries, children, families and so on.