Crying Woman at Wythenshaw Hospital

I drive my neighbour to regular doctors and hospital appointments. We drove to a sprawling hospital for tests on her heart to see if it was strong enough to withstand an operation. On a recent visit we found every car park was full. With time running out I shoved her in the foyer of the building and went to find a parking spot. I spotted one building with a empty parking spaces outside it. My Smartcar car is like a dodgem and in desperation I drove it round the side of a barrier and parked up. I popped into the reception to ask if it was okay and it was. After the appointment I returned to the car. With a bursting bladder I asked if I could use a toilet and was sent down a corridor. I passed a couple holding one another in silence and a woman leaning on a wall weeping. Oh dear. I had a slash and passed the people again - had someone died? Was this building for severely ill children? I was not sure. I thought I would paint the woman leaning on the wall.

I drew this out and did the usual blocking in with acrylic paint to tell me what colours I might use. I pasted on a background like 1970's wallpaper and put a simple black frock on the woman. This was done loosely and without attention to detail. Normally at this point I would repaint in oils but this sort of half-finished blurry look seem to ping with me. If I got the oil paints out I might be in danger of over-painting so I decided to stop. This bare grainy look seemed to fit the theme of the painting.

Oddly I painted the woman's arms red and realised she looked like she'd plunged them into a deep fat fryer. Hastily I re-did them. A dab of black paint gave her a perm hair style. I'm not sure how the horizontal line got there (you can see it sticking out.) I must have used some tape on the canvas to get the lines straight and left it on. Oh well, no need to fret - it's only going to sit in the attic for the rest of its life.

I didn't sharpen things up in the end and concluded the blurry fuzzy look seemed bearable and suited the downbeat topic. Perhaps if you know a miserable person you could buy it for them and say, "This painting reminds me of you - it so gloomy and pessimistic." Will £42,000 be okay with you? I was sending a £42 donation to Cheek Flapper (a charity that helps chronically flatulent people) but someone some 000's got added on.