gil corral - painting john grant on black velvet, summer 2020. photo by lauryn sophia
last spring. spring of 2020, we had a really wonderful series of phone calls and texts with artist/musician john grant. we talked about black velvet paintings of course, and also growing up the midwest (coco’s formative years were in iowa and indiana), growing up an outsider, growing up going to state fairs and other common experiences we shared. within all of that he shared his vision for the album he was working on and the album cover art that he just knew gil would be the one who could do it with the quality he desired. the result of all of this is not only four pieces of super beautiful, rich, FULL of feeling velvets on one super incredible musical oeuvre d’art, but a warm friendship to boot.
the album releases june 25! can’t wait to get our hands of a physical copy. check out some of what john and his record label did with the images and packaging and all of it, i won’t even try to describe - truly a picture/black velvet painting is worth a thousand words….!
oh and last august, when the lauryn sophia of decor maine magazine was here at the hogfarm taking photos for the upcoming article, gil was working on the finishing touches of john - you can see it in the article - and i’ll add more behind the scene peeks here:
at gil’s easel - in biddeford maine, right before sending them to reykjavik iceland
gil corral - painting john grant on black velvet, summer 2020. photo by lauryn sophia