{"id":1884,"date":"2025-07-08T23:17:27","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T23:17:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/?p=1884"},"modified":"2026-06-24T15:00:53","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T15:00:53","slug":"real-estate-chaos-begs-for-a-chaotic-painting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/real-estate-chaos-begs-for-a-chaotic-painting\/","title":{"rendered":"Real estate chaos begs for a chaotic painting"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I’ve mentioned in the past, sometimes I look at real estate offerings in obscure places<\/a>, just to see what costs and options are available in places outside of the NY\/NJ metro area. I took a look today in Gladbrook, Iowa, where my grandmother used to live, and found a small, 2 bedroom 1 bath home for $54,000. But while most of the pictures of the property showed typical well-kept rooms, one photo in particular stuck out for being a complete mess. Part of the wall is unpainted, the bed looks like there was recently a wrestling match on it, and the tv mount on the wall looks like someone turned the tv upside down. What the hell is going on here? Why wouldn’t the realtor take 5 minutes to at least make the bed and rotate the tv?<\/p>\n

I decided to insert one of my paintings, titled “Emerging Into Chaos” into this room interior, which you can see above. This painting was inspired by the birth of my son in 1998; on the day he was born, the front page of the NY Times had reporting on Republicans preparing articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky situation. I don’t recall what else was in the news that day, but just the feeling of the world being chaotic as my son was entering this world.<\/p>\n

Here’s another look at the real estate photo without my art, so you can see the unpainted wall in its original form, and a better view of my painting next to it.<\/p>\n

\"Original
Original real estate photo of a messy room and a view of “Emerging Into Chaos” by Mark McKinney.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I’ve mentioned in the past, sometimes I look at real estate offerings in obscure places, just to see what costs and options are available in places outside of the NY\/NJ metro area. I took a look today in Gladbrook, Iowa, where my grandmother used to live, and found a small, 2 bedroom 1 bath … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3213,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,24],"tags":[328,394,626],"class_list":["post-1884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-by-mark-mckinney","category-home-living","tag-gladbrook","tag-iowa","tag-real-estate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1884"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3216,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1884\/revisions\/3216"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}