Car Date

414 inches, acrylic on mat board

It occurs to me that while I am thoroughly enjoying painting these miniature pictures, I don't know what I will do with them.  Save them in hopes that the gallery that specializes in small format art will sell them?  Frame them?  Stash them in the old art drawer?  The challenge of painting minis is intriguing, how to recompose and simplify old snapshots, what colors to choose.  Often the photos are overexposed, or blurry, so I look long and hard to decide what is is I am seeing in them.  The end results are something like magic to me, a re-envisioning of people long gone, times past.  The initial drawing is useful for deciding on composition, but rarely allows me to appreciate what color will do for the image.  Little by little the shapes become rounded, the figures take on personality, and the scene comes to life.

I know that the woman is my husband's mother, Lorraine.  I'm not sure if the man is Walter, his father, or not.  They look to be teenagers here, and I only knew them when they were in their late fifties and sixties.  None of us at sixty look much like the teenagers we once were.  Whoever he is, I particularly liked his obvious attraction to her, the confidence that comes through his body language, and those snappy shoes.   I wish she was alive, for lots of reasons, but today I'd like to find out about the day this scene was captured in a snapshot.