Harmony Among Forgotten Keys

I wasn’t hunting for inspiration that day—I was simply just being at my favorite place to relax. I wandered on a weekday into a quiet thrift shop filled with second‑hand furniture and forgotten treasures. In a dim corner I spotted a large, old grand piano. Its surface was scratched, the varnish dulled, some keys chipped or missing. It looked like it had once held so much music—but then time had somehow silenced it.

In that moment I knew I had my subject.

Slumped on the couch with my Ipad on hand, I imagined a scene. An old piano, just like what I saw, but now with a tiny greens pushing between the keys and small flowers and shrubs poking up around the back mechanism, as though nature had decided this instrument deserved a new song—it needed to be leaves and flowers instead of note and chord. I set up my palette - deep wood tones for the piano’s body, soft greens for the plants emerging through its keys. I made the subject up close showing the chipped keys and the flowers pushing through—to show them as symbols of quiet persistence. I made it seem that these shrubs were not simply growing—they were honoring the instrument’s past, giving it a second life in a different form.

I hope when you view it, you’ll feel that moment of discovery—the thrift shop, the old piano, the plants in unison with the old piano—and remember, beauty can emerge from what was once used, abandoned or forgotten.

Thank you for welcoming this piece and its story into your space. May it remind you of second chances, gentle transformations, and the unexpected places where beauty lies.