House Painting with People.

16" x 20" oil on linen

This is a house in Connecticut that I painted for a couple who won the bid in a grand prize to benefit the Autism Society of Connecticut. I donate a few paintings a year to worthy causes and this is one. The couple sent me three pictures, one of her with the boys, one of him with the boys and another of the house. Adding the people in front of the house is a nice way to personalize a house portrait.

Another Christmas Quickie!

Sometimes you get a picture of a house that is perfect in every way except the angle. I used tow different picture to completes this painting for Kaitlin, who will gift it to her parents for Christmas. The straightforward angle of the first picture showed the bushes in bloom and was lovely. In order to get a little more dimension to the painting she went to Google Maps and grabbed a pretty good picture of what the house looked like from an angle. The resolution of those photos has really improved over the years.

What I really like about doing these house paintings is that I am learning how to advance the important stuff and delete the extraneous data. There was a time when I would have painted in the background houses- now I know it's better just to suggest them and keep the focus on the house.

Kaitlin's House

11" x 14"

oil on canvas

Home Sweet Home

I like front porches. I have a front porch but it's not "that" kind of porch. My front porch is covered in steel and vinyl and it is not 'inviting'. I do have a sun porch that is comfortable and invites visitors to sit and stay for awhile. But the old-fashioned porch of the 1940s and 50s is a rarity. My husband;s grandmother had one. Her house was a classic 'bungalow' style and faced the main road in town. The traffic could be annoying at night when you were trying to sleep but on a lazy summer afternoon it was a comfortable place to sit and watch the world go by. Neighbors out for a stroll or walking their dogs; all stopped to say a few words and remark on the weather. There were no strangers in this era.

When did we begin to enclose those porches with screens? Eventually the porches shrank until they were little more than a stoop with no room for a chair. Living rooms became larger to accommodate the ever-increasing size of new forms of entertainment like television. While our horizons became broader and began to include the world more and more, our local connections disappeared. My husband's grandmother knew the names of everyone on her street and probably two or three streets down. She knew who was getting married, who was expecting a child, what grade the kids were in and she never met a stranger. I know a few of the residents in my neighborhood, but most are strangers and we have lived here for 11 years.

I think the front porch has become a symbol for a kinder, gentler time. I filled this one with warm light to infuse it with a romantic and nostalgic feeling. I added a cat because I love cats.