...... a couple oil paintings I have done, and my painting background.
It was fall in 1957. I was 12 years old and just entering high-school in 7th grade. Our high-school had an outbreak of Typhoid fever, and thirty-some kids in our Jr High came down with it, including myself. Back then it wasn't a simple thing to cure. Alot of the kids had to be hospitalized. (This was back in the day when doctors made house-calls!) Anyone who had Typhoid had to be quarrantined, and that meant no company for the rest of the family, either. Everyone in the family had to be tested and then vaccinated when the tests came back negative. I guess I was fortunate in that I did not have to go to the hospital. My loving Mom took care of me with help from my sister and brothers and Dad, as they all had more chores to do as I was unable. All dishes I used had to be boiled, all clothing and bedding dis-infected (remember the old Lysol??). Anything else I touched, if not able to be disinfected, had to be disposed of, after I got well. I was in bed for 3 solid months and basically it took time be able to walk again.
During the recent summer, my Grandmother and my Mom had started taking oil painting lessons from a local art instructor. And as it was hard to keep me occupied day in and day out after I started feeling a little better, one day Mom brought me a small canvas and some paint on a pallet and said to see what I could do with it. She came back a while later and I had painted the head of a horse (I LOVED horses .... couldn't get enough of Marguerite Henry's book "Album of Horses") at which she was surprised. So Mom gave me another canvas and I painted a ship with big white sails ......
Since painting supplies were a little pricey, Mom started me painting on pieces of the old textured window blinds (remember them??) I did a basket of yarn with kittens playing, and I traced one of those old wall-rugs at my Aunt Lois' house that had 4 Arabian horses and riders and a city in the background, and painted it on window-blind about 20" x 36". Then a painting of Jesus and children gathered round on canvas board, that was from a greeting card. In Sr -High I took the art class and we did self-portraits. During that time, I did a wild horse in a desert scene and Dad made a wormy-chestnut frame for it, sand-blasting it until it had grooves in that showed the grain of the wood. The frame was beautiful! I am sad to say I lost what few paintings I had in a house fire when my oldest daughter was ony 3.
When my Grandma passed away, she left all her oil painting supplies to me. That got me started again. A lady I cleaned house for, as her husband was deteriorating in health, told her to give me his paint supplies as he no longer had the strength to paint, and wanted me to have them. Shortly after that I painted this picture.....
"Pitcher Pump and Daisies"
which hangs on our living room wall. I wish I had made the background lighter.
"You are Invited"
.........a communion scene, lives in my daughter's house in Pennsylvania. There have been numerous others since that time but I won't bore you with it right now.... :) Since I am now "semi"-retired, (pun intended) I am enjoying getting back into it, and hope to post a painting from time to time.
