Adrift

ADRIFT (Diptych)
Medium: Oil on canvas + vintage collage on panel
Size: 24" × 30" (oil painting) + 11" × 14" (collage study)
Year: 2024
Series: "Find the Differences" (RAM Retrospective, 2026)
Status: Available
Investment: $8,500
 
The Story
We left Maui with everything we owned in storage, drove across the country, and bought a house in Indiana. We had 45 days until closing, then four months until our belongings arrived.
 
No studio. No supplies. No projector. No computer. Just what fit in our suitcases—and an overwhelming need to create after 3,000 miles of American highways.
 
Design Challenge #1: How do you start painting when you have nothing?
Answer: Buy a basic art kit. A few brushes, small panels, a couple canvases, a cheap easel, a handful of oil paint tubes.
 
Design Challenge #2: What do you paint?
 
Answer: The stack of vintage magazines and books we'd collected at junk shops, antique malls, garage sales, and flea markets across the country. I cut them up. I used the fragments as an emotional palette—images that resonated with grief, nostalgia, displacement, hope.
 
The process: Create a collage study on a small panel. Then paint a larger canvas version freehand—no projector, no sketch, no grid, no nothing. Just eyes, brush, paint, instinct.
 
This is the first piece in that series.
 
The Work
ADRIFT is a diptych—two pieces meant to be displayed together.
The collage study (11x14") uses vintage magazine fragments: a 1970s Sports Illustrated image, an Acapulco travel ad, layered and reassembled into a new emotional narrative.
 
The oil painting (24x30") is a freehand interpretation of that collage—painted without mechanical aid, scaled up 4× in size through observation and instinct alone.
 
But here's the hidden layer: The two pieces are a visual puzzle. Look closely and you'll find differences—words changed, details shifted, meanings altered. In this first piece, the change is subtle: the football player's name shifts from "Bulaich" to "Waiting," creating the phrase "Waiting Adrift in Acapulco."
 
As the series evolves, these hidden alterations become more complex, more layered, more meaningful.
 
The Synchronicity
I picked up that Sports Illustrated in Mississippi—months before we moved to Indiana. I used it instinctively in the composition, drawn to the image without fully understanding why.
 
It was only after I finished the painting that I saw it: Indianapolis Colts.
 
We'd just moved to Indiana.
 
There are no accidents.
 
The Framework
This series follows strict design principles rooted in marketing psychology and visual hierarchy:
 
The Law of Three: Each composition contains three main elements.
 
The Billboard-to-Library Strategy:
20-foot hook: Bold color, striking text, immediate visual impact
6-foot strike: Faces, figures, details come into focus
1-inch whisper: Hyper-fine brushwork, intimate detail that rewards close viewing
 
The result is work that functions at multiple scales—from across a gallery to inches from the canvas.
 
Additional layers:
Each piece references the Hero's Journey (found objects destined for landfills, rescued and reborn)
All source material physically collected during our cross-country journey
Bold compositions bisected or trisected for maximum visual tension
 
The Series
 
ADRIFT is the first piece in a body of work that will anchor my Richmond Art Museum retrospective (June 2026). As the series grows, the paintings grow in scale, complexity, and synchronicity. The hidden puzzles deepen. The emotional stakes heighten. The technical challenges compound.
 
This is where it begins.
 
Acquisition
Investment: $8,500 (both pieces included—diptych must remain together)
Payment plans available: 3-6 months, zero interest
Example: $1,417/month × 6 months
Shipping: Professional art logistics, fully insured (included)
Certificate of authenticity: Included for both pieces
 
This is conceptual work disguised as collage. It's nostalgic and futuristic. It's found objects reborn as fine art. It's the Hero's Journey applied to a 1970s magazine destined for a landfill—now destined for museum walls.
 
If you collect work that has layers—visual, conceptual, emotional, synchronistic—this is it.
 
Inquiries: yes@justinkaneelder.com