Emerald Hideaway is a vertical green impasto jungle painting with two toucans in the canopy. Hand-painted in oil on a tall canvas, sized for a narrow wall that needs energy.
The piece started as a quick sketch of two toucans and turned into a small jungle. The painting is dominated by deep green foliage, with the birds tucked into the upper third where the gold light breaks through. The impasto is thick enough that the leaves have actual shadow, which is what gives the piece its sense of depth.
The studio uses palette knife almost exclusively on the leaves, so every stroke is a flat plane of color rather than a soft blend. That choice is what makes the surface feel carved rather than painted. The toucans themselves are thinner, more brushed, so the eye reads them as a separate layer in front of the wall of green. The contrast between the two surfaces is half the work.
Color is the other half. We mixed seven different greens for the leaves and used most of them, including a couple that lean almost black. The toucans are warm orange and a single bright yellow on the beak, which is the only place in the painting where a pure color appears. Everything else is mixed and softened. That single bright point is what your eye keeps returning to.
This is not a quiet painting. It wants a wall with some empty space around it, otherwise the green starts to compete with the rest of the room. A narrow vertical wall between two windows is a good spot. A home office with neutral furniture works. A reading nook with a single chair and nothing else is even better. In a busy room, the painting will fight everything else for attention and usually lose.
The piece is the loudest of our animal and tropical range, and probably the one that gets photographed most. It is also the one that needs the most space around it. We tell buyers this in advance, mostly because we have watched people hang it above a small table and then move it twice.
