Places

I realize there are several paintings I didn't post when I wasn't posting. 

  

Might As Well Paint

Last Saturday, I visited Defender's Park in Pasadena.  It's a small park with some significant monuments, but I believe its main purpose is access to the Colorado Bridge.  Because the mountains looked beautiful, and not because I'm obstinate, I painted with my back to the bridge.  There is a sign posted at the bridge to discourage suicide, "there is hope."  My back was to the sign as well, but not metaphorically or anything.  I started painting relatively early and relatively small, which afforded me some extra time to do little people studies.  They include a couple of painters and some unsuspecting walkers.  

Here is the view that is behind you if you are driving west on the Colorado Bridge or sitting and painting it at street level.

Atmosphere

I painted this on my birthday, up in the foothills.  I kind of like the sky and receding hills.  The shrubs and grass in the foreground bother me a little, but that's the nature of shrubs and grass.  I look at these landscapes sometimes, and think of how pastoral they might have looked before the phone poles.  One of the guys I paint with really likes the phone poles, and observes that they will undoubtedly become obsolete and disappear in a few more years.  People who are young now will be old then and they'll look back with fond nostalgia on our paintings of phone poles.  I consider sometimes how my adult life has been marked by the arrival and departure of plastic grocery bags.

I kind of wish it were a valentine.  Maybe inside the house on the first floor, there's a sturdy kitchen table.  On the table is a half-made valentine, lettered and painted, with scraps of ribbon and lace, and that super-fine sparkly glitter.  Some of the glitter will stick to the tabletop for all time and defy every effort to scrub it off.  Kind of like love itself, and what it leaves on your heart.      

New Year's Resolutions

Then January got away.  I had that (or some other) nasty-assed virus that laid me up for like two weeks.  Very unlike me, taking to bed.  It kind of tore down all my resistance and then swallowed up my new year's resolutions.  Will power does not fare well in the face of chills and paroxysmal coughing.  But you know what?  None of the resolutions pertained to blogging anyhow.  I resolved neither to do it more frequently nor give it up altogether.

I painted at Heritage Square last Saturday.  I usually don't take the painters to places that cost money, but I'm kind of a fan and supporter of Heritage Square.  I also think on a typical Saturday HS has a really great ambiance; like you've gone back in time 150 years, and there aren't any cars or leaf blowers or plastic bags.  It's quiet and lazy.  They have recently installed a reproduction of an old timey pharmacy, filled with a huge collection of  antique pharmaceuticals, beauty supplies, prophylactic devices, liver pills and snake oils that were amassed over the years by a family of pharmacists.  I looked for, but could not find, Colonel Green's elixirs.  But I could have missed it.

There's something a little strange about this painting, and I can't quite figure out what.  Someone suggested the shadows were a little ominous. There's a kind of pointed absence of people in broad daylight.  Suggesting that a shoot out could be imminent. You wouldn't know it if I didn't tell you, but that's my red car just beyond the gates.