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.

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.