Bike weather

Mattie and Annie share a bike   16x20 acrylic painting

I have a number of vintage photos with people and bikes. This will be one of the themes for this year.

Back to work

Reverie SOLD

I just go back from a terrific visit with the daughters in beautiful Victoria. It was hot and sunny every day, unheard of for there. It clouded over and became cool the morning I flew out, much more the Victoria I lived in!

Struggling

I was working on this painting sunday and became very frustrated with it. I am always having to be aware that I must move beyond just copying a photo and try to make it into a painting. I was ready to paint over this one but decided I may as well push it a little bit, add some stamps, move something, do something! Gesso would cover just as well if it didn't work out. Results posted tomorrow. Thanks Zagotta for the inspiration to keep trying.

Reverie

Reverie 16x16 acrylic

I quite like the feel of this one, very warm and nostalgic.

I just started reading " A Girl named Zippy" about a precocious girl growing up in a very small Indiana town in the 1960's. It reminds me a great deal of my own childhood. Certain passages, like this one "Everyone in Mooreland believed in God (except my dad). There was no such thing as multiculturalism--no people of color, no exotic religions, no one openly homosexual (there was one old bachelor who had suspiciously good taste in furniture, but we didn't question his private life)."

For the most part, my childhood was calm and safe. We were free-range children who roamed wherever our bikes could take us. The Dads were mainly farmers and oil field workers, WW2 veterans who picked up their lives and soldiered on, careful to refrain from swearing in front of wives and kids. The Moms raised varying assortments of children to mostly good effect. Everyone grew a garden and canned for the winter. They laid crude oil on the gravel roads in the summer to lay the dust. I loved the smell of it so much I could almost eat it.