If you’ve seen the exhibit “Misfits” already*, you’ve noticed that Teresa Oaxaca’s paintings are rich in allegory and imagined stories — sparked by evocative poses, enigmatic objects, and titles like Raving Prince.

But one painting’s backstory takes place very much in the real world. And if it looks familiar to you, you may have seen it on Jimmy Fallon, a New York City billboard, or maybe in your record collection. It all started with a Google search and a phone call from a musician on a mission.

Short version: musician Nate Ruess’s first solo album, Grand Romantic, needed cover art, and Teresa Oaxaca painted it for him. That painting, also titled Grand Romantic, is on view at The Art League as part of Oaxaca’s solo exhibit.

But painting for an album cover has its challenges, quite apart from the short deadline. How to represent a collection of music with just a single image? How do you paint for such a large audience? This is, after all, a 60″ by 40″ oil on canvas that most people will see as a tiny square on their phone — or, delightfully, on TV or the side of a building.

Oaxaca writes:

“I tried to make a portrait of the singer. I only listened to one song, ‘Grand Romantic,’ when I painted it (and his prior bands’ work) because the album had not yet been released. My approach was pretty much the same as that of a commission. I worked with Nate but I also had a lot of free rein to do my own thing.

I did not paint differently, but the original image was cropped to a square. Some background details were left out but it worked fine. Warner Music/Atlantic Records also licensed two charcoal drawings from me and some shots of my palette, so those were also incorporated into the back and insides of the album.”

For the full story, you can read the artist’s blog post and the musician’s account.

*(If you haven’t seen “Misfits” yet, you have until May 1!)