Disney Limited Edition: Cinderella's New Day

DISNEY LIMITED EDITION: CINDERELLA'S NEW DAY

Heather Edwards

MEDIUM: Giclée on Canvas
SIZE: 24" x 18"
EDITION SIZE: 195
ARTIST: Heather Edwards
SKU: DFA-LE-CINDERELLANEWDAY

ABOUT THE IMAGE: Artist Heather Edwards delivers her imaginative interpretation of Cinderella, aptly conveying the beauty and enduring optimism of this classic character's personality. Even under the darkest of circumstances, limited to a life of servitude to her step mother, Cinderella dreams of a new day, when a life of love and freedom will be hers.  The little bird on her finger is held high and ready for flight to the kingdom beyond the sunlit window behind her, a beautiful symbol of her own pending journey into the outside world.

ABOUT THE MEDIUM:  Limited edition prints are reproductions of an original piece of art work. The giclée prints on canvas are museum quality prints that last the upwards of 100 years. Giclée printing is a process that uses fade-resistant, archival inks and archival substrates to print on large format printers. The run of prints are capped at a specific number. Limited edition prints can be more valuable to art collectors than prints without a restricted number of copies because of the rarity of the prints. Each piece is hand-numbered and embellished by the artist.  Each piece also includes a Certificate of Authenticity.

ABOUT THE ARTIST: Some stories begin on well-defined roads or with billboard accomplishments. But the story of an artist usually begins somewhere less noticeable, perhaps even unrecognizable to most. It is just such a beginning that gave life to the art of creator, Heather Edwards. Paintings were born from 5:45 a.m. mornings during summer breaks from school in Paradise, Utah, waking up to breathe in the crisp air and watch the sun rise and glow through the blades of grass in the lawn. Ideas sprung from thunderstorms, the struggles of working on a small farm and from the loyal companionship of pets. Personal experiences combined to shape the narrative behind each forthcoming creation.

From that vantage point, life itself became the paint on the brush and the guiding force behind everything Heather made and from as early as her preschool years she knew that making art was what she wanted to do for the rest of her life. However, receiving extra training or attending an acknowledged art school were not to be part of her story. Yet, it was from her own father that she learned one of her most valuable lessons: observe. It was a simple enough concept, but it stuck.

Heather's paintings are the product of decades of observation of people, of environments, of animals and of textiles, as well as the convergence of every scrap of knowledge that came attached to them. The wonder and magic of Disney movies, both the imagery and the music, also helped cultivate the ideas that began to take form in painting, and now, boldly recreating Disney characters in a way that brings them into the realism of our world has become an exciting new passion.

To Heather, every painting is personal, but not necessarily in the way most might think. "I don't necessarily want the viewer to have the same response to my painting as I have. Instead, my hope is that the expression I paint on the board through hours of observation and execution of detail will speak to them in a way that ignites thoughts and feelings unique to them.”

ABOUT THE FILM: Cinderella is a 1950 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney and originally released by RKO Radio Pictures. Based on the fairy tale of the same name by Charles Perrault, it is the 12th Disney animated feature film. During the mid to late 1940s, Walt Disney Productions had suffered financially after losing connections to the European film markets due to the outbreak of World War II. During this time, the studio endured box office bombs such as Pinocchio (1940), Fantasia (1940), and Bambi (1942), all of which would later become more successful with several re-releases in theaters and on home video.

Due to this, the studio was over $4 million in debt and was on the verge of bankruptcy. Walt Disney and his animators returned to feature film production in 1948 after producing a string of package films with the idea of adapting Charles Perrault's Cendrillon into an animated film. After two years in production, Cinderella was released on February 15, 1950. It became the greatest critical and commercial hit for the studio since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Dumbo (1941) and helped reverse the studio's fortunes. It received three Academy Award nominations, including Best Music, Original Song for "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo.”