Watercolors by Mimi Torchia Boothby

In a previous life, I played stand up bass for an old time string band. As a bass player, you are not really required to think much and as a result you tend to meditate a lot as you play tunes. Tunes with funny names, like Needle case and The girl with the blue dress and Yellow Barber. The list is as long as it is colorful, so as I played the simple rhythms, I would imagine just what these things looked like. Some of course, weren’t so nice, like Yellow Barber refers to a person of mixed racial heritage, but others, like Needle Case, simply referred to things that are no longer common. So I thought it would be fun to paint some of them one day. Just last week, I asked my good buddy Nants for an idea for a postcard painting. She wanted a painting of a guy playing Needle case. So I did that but it just didn’t seem right. So after I got that done, I painted a needle case.

and here’s the tune:

It was worth a try; I always wanted to paint a bluecream kitten. In reality, these colors are meant to help disguise the animal, a type of protective camouflage. But as an artist, my mission is to take these colors and and make them pretty. To add to the fun, I used an odd kind of paper, so there was no certainty of the results. Siena was a very wild and frightened kitten. We worked with her extensively, her sensitivity and intelligence made her one of our favorites. The painting shows just how frightened and tentative she was; but we also know that she turned into a wonderful happy pet.