Watercolor

I have been thinking a lot about Betty Lou since her birthday party.  I look at all of her paintings on facebook and marvel at them.  They are so wonderful.  I use to paint pretty good watercolors when I was studying with her, though not nearly as good as hers.  Mine are more academic.  She is inspired by the landscape, by nature, in a way that I am not.  I think about my painting......she thinks about what she is painting.  Still, what I did with watercolor was much better than what I do in other mediums.

Josie talked to a gallery owner in Rockland about my paintings and he said he would like to see them.  No matter how often I have told Josie I am not interesting in selling, she doesn't seem to believe me.....or she can't help talking about me when she's in a gallery.  Anyway, she gave me the name of the gallery so I looked it up on line.  She had lead me to believe that I was as good as any of the artists represented there.  The work I saw humbled me, and made me realize how amateurish my painting is.  This took me back to Betty Lou and watercolor painting.  I was much better at that than what I'm doing now.  So I got out my watercolors, determined to regain some expertise.  The painting here is my latest attempt, as this is certainly not the first or second or third time deciding this same course of action.  I set up a still life of the dolls I made, hoping that part of my problem has been painting from photographs.  I think I was right in that.  Plein air painting was always my forte.......and always large format.  This little painting, though, has some of the characteristics of my old self.  It encouraged me. Photos have a static look that I can't help but capture.  So I make plans once again to go outside, using my own old work as inspiration.  I'll try to post a couple of those here, though I am having trouble getting pictures on line since my computer was "fixed."

Ahh, the good old days.......