Pasadena Freeway

I'm not sure I ever finished this painting, but I'm pretty sure I gave up on it since it's been over five years since I've touched it. I could do the palms trees MUCH better now. It has the car perspective problem.

I like the subject of the painting. It's kind of iconic. I've been making this drive several days a week for over twenty years. And from ages three to - I don't know - maybe eleven - I took this ride once or twice a weekend. We held our breath through all the tunnels, or at least we faked it. That was then. One of the cars is my former '62 Impala; one is trying to be my husband's former '82 RX7.

Fire and rain

I was at the Arboretum one day one December when a fire broke out in the foothills. I painted it.

Next week, I understand, there will be rain and plenty of it.

Railway station

So this is the old Pasadena train station. It may be one of my more successful acrylic paintings. It used to hang over a hole that some movers made in the wall at our old home. It has many layers of nearly transparent color in medium in the sky and the street, as you can see.

This was just for fun. Although I do like the theme of nature reclaiming that which humans have refined and civilized. I also like the idea of mixing a living (apparently) element into what is basically a still life. The lizard in fact was a lifelike toy baby green iguana. I wish I could find that tea pot.

I put this painting up at a yard sale, and nobody bought it.

Little Italy

This is older painting. It is in acrylic paints which I have sworn off. Well, at least for painting paintings. If you're going to paint shoes or boxes or something else, it's still tops.

I wanted to paint New York's Chinatown or the rows of taxis, but when I got my photographs home I thought Little Italy would make the best painting. I'm glad I painted it, because it's shrinking, and it's worth remembering, even if you don't like cannolis too well. It's a fairly big painting, which I painted over a period of weeks. As a result, I think it's a little disjointed. I love parts of it, but I think other parts don't work all that well. A friend of mine likes the cars I paint - that they are generic and timeless. But I think if I'm going to keep putting cars in my paintings, I should spend some time studying car anatomy and perspective. A good subject for sketching. Sometimes my lack of understanding of the volume and dimensions of cars makes parking difficult as well.