“I think those moments in our lives when the most quotidian tasks lay us bare are really powerful.”
— Bill Strickland, art collector
Lauren Kindle, Replacing the Expansion Tank on the Water Heater, painting detail
About two years ago, I helped my husband install a new expansion tank on our hot water heater in the basement. It was an awkward, dark, and musty job. We struggled physically and emotionally to achieve some semblance of teamwork. As we wrestled with the expansion tank, we came up against our physical limitations and the edges of our emotions.
“You’re doing it wrong!” I remember Ian said. I’m sure I retorted something salty in reply.
As we labored, the light shone in from the basement window, illuminating Ian’s back and arms. I was reminded of those dramatic Italian Baroque paintings that I had been admiring in my art books.
As I held the expansion tank, I thought: this could be a dramatic painting like one of those Baroque paintings…
Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith and her Maidservant, ca. 1623–25.
In those Baroque paintings, the subject matter is always something very important and high stakes, like a religious story involving royalty or gods and angels. But why does everything have to be so grand? Ordinary mortal humans, living their mundane lives, surely they, too are given moments of grand drama and tremendous emotion.
So, after the basement task was completed, I went and made some preliminary sketches. Around that same time, I had also been very interested in this series of paintings by Leland Bell, showing a small domestic drama: a cat delivering a dead mouse to a couple in their bedroom. I glued these copies of his paintings in my sketchbook for inspiration. I’m sure you will see the influence in my sketches.
Print outs of Leland Bell's paintings that I glued into my sketchbook.
First I worked in an old New Yorker magazine with a sharpie and some white gouache:
Lauren Kindle, "Expansion Tank" gouache and India ink in an old New Yorker
Then I wrote a couple of letters to friends, and I painted the envelopes:
Lauren Kindle, painted envelope, gouache
Lauren Kindle, painted envelope, gouache
And finally I did two 9 x 12 inch oil paintings.
Lauren Kindle, "Replacing the Expansion Tank on the Water Heater (1)" oil on primed paper mounted on board, 9 x 12 inches
Lauren Kindle, "Replacing the Expansion Tank on the Water Heater (2)" oil on primed paper mounted on board, 9 x 12 inches
I posted all these images on social media and then moved on with my life. .
I didn’t think about the paintings again until recently, two years later. In May, a local collector named Bill Strickland, reached out to me. He and his partner wanted to buy one of those paintings. He had been thinking about them for two years, and they really moved him! That made me so happy. He wrote to me in a private message:
“I think those moments in our lives when the most quotidian tasks lay us bare are really powerful.”
I definitely agree.
And, in a lovely ending to the story, my husband Ian built a beautiful oak frame for the painting. Which goes to show that we do make a good team sometimes, when it’s important.
