The lyrics “Smiling is hard to do, can’t clown around without you…” Kept haunting me. The tempo of the music is so happy and uplifting but the lyrics are deeply sad and filled with loss. The location I chose to paint was a swing set on an island just off the coast of Toronto. I sometimes go there to escape from city life. There’s this swing set in the middle of the island covered with rust. It’s this happy object in an unhappy state, which is ironic because it’s a happy beautiful place with a fun playground but its abandoned and sad. The swing set seemed the perfect metaphor for this song. I painted it contrasted against the beautiful landscape on a sunny day to pronounce how just how sad it is: a ghost swing set… Me on it with an empty, stationary lifeless swing beside me.
