What would you do if someone told you that they would give you $100 if you’d set up an easel and paint pictures outside just long enough to have it recorded forever? Well, I said yes!
I was told I had to be at 1st Street and Battery Street at 3:00 pm, so I got there at 2:00 pm and set up my easel. I was in a rather industrial section of downtown Seattle, or mostly just streets, with some appealing vistas off into the distance in two directions. So, enjoying the incredibly rare warm sun, I positioned myself looking out over Elliott Bay and started to sketch out a painting. What was I doing? EEEK…
And people walked by. I got many smiles, and a lot of encouragement, even when all I had to show was a couple of blotches of color. It’s the first plein aire I have done in a long time (plein aire means paint outside from life) even though I do a lot of sketching in my travel book, this is not the same, there’s a lot more pressure, because unlike working in a travel sketch book, you are on display for the world to see AND CRITIQUE. And critique they did! But it was all favorable.
And I’m going to do it again!
My father was born in Newark, NJ, in 1920 to two Italian immigrants. The midwife misspelled his name, so instead of being Alfio, he was named Alfredo Luigi Torchia.
He was born at home, a first generation American.
So much time has passed since his childhood that I realized it would be interesting to try and illustrate the things he told me. This is part of a correspondence that I am doing with another woman who happened to have been born in Newark, New Jersey; like me, like both of my parents!
This is a hand painted postcard. I have really been enjoying “Mail Art” and have been trying to paint a new one every day. These horses have been out in a pasture all day and I think they are ready for some oats.
I wonder if anyone reads my blog. Ok. So comment on this painting and I will pick a deserving person and send it to them. You? Maybe! I will contact you if I don’t know your mailing address..
This is the second half of my long, detailed autobiography that i did for a mail art project.
If you can’t read it, click on the picture until you get a larger view.
As part of a mail art exchange, I was asked to correspond in cartoon format. By the time the weekend was out, I had done 8 complete strips and an autobiography! It looks like I have to work on the lettering..
To read the cartoons, click on the cartoon until it is full size. Scroll down. Stay tuned for part two tomorrow.
