Zinnias - and a Mean Town

Zinnias

Oil on canvas, 30x30

Please contact Lori at Center Framing & Art for price and delivery/shipping/pickup info! 

These zinnias are my newest experiment in florals. The paint is thick and deep and rich, and the colors just sing. I had a great time painting them, and I'm honored to have them displayed so prominently at Center Framing and Art in West Hartford Center, CT! 

***

ON MY WAY to Indiana, I drove along the so-called National Freeway, Interstate 68 from Maryland into West Virginia. It was a scary drive, because the highway climbs way up into the mountains, and the clouds were so low that, until I crossed the summit, it was like driving in the thickest fog I'd ever seen. 

Just before I got onto I-68, I left the highway to get gas. I found myself in the town of Hancock, MD. This little town really got me thinking. 

Like so many of the towns in that area, it's built on a series of hillsides. And it was probably built when mining was big. That would be my guess, at any rate. 

I couldn't get back onto the highway near the exit where I got off, so I had to drive through the town to return to the highway. The more I drove, the worse I felt for the people who lived there. 

It's not that it was a terrible, dilapidated town. It wasn't a ghetto, or a testament to poverty. I've seen those towns, and they are sad. But this, this was sadder, in a way. It was a town with no future. The thought that this was a mean town came to me - not that the people are mean, though they might be. But the town itself is mean, in what I'd guess is the Victorian sense of the word. 

I compared Hancock to other small towns I've known and lived in, including Wachapreague, and found myself returning again and again to the idea that the town was so mean that it would be next to impossible for anyone to dream of much more than leaving - and even that would be a stretch. 

The experience, though brief, hit me hard. And it left me feeling grateful that I didn't grow up in a place like that, and never had the misfortune to live in a place like that. 

***

Shows, shows and more shows! 

The zinnia painting (I love it!) along with a whole bunch of my best paintings, are on display right now, and for sale, at Center Framing & Art in West Hartford, CT. That's the window, below. 

***

Also this week, I brought work to the Denison Pequotsepos Nature Center, in Mystic, CT. Elissa Bass and I had a fun time hanging my teeny paintings and some larger ones, too. The photos below show how it came out. The show will be up through July! 

***

And I have two new pieces at Art Gallery H in Tubac, AZ. Here's Audrey Hoffmann, one of the owners, sitting in the midst of my paintings. The new paintings  are on the wall 

closest to  the sunflower painting. 

***

I WILL BE in Annapolis, MD, this weekend for the Annapolis Arts, Crafts and Wine Festival, which takes place at the Navy-Marine Corps Stadium. 

Don't know my booth number yet, but I'll post it here when I do. 

THE FOLLOWING WEEKEND, I'm in the New Milford Historical Society Arts Festival, with my friend, the fabulous jeweler Cynthia Battista. It should be a fun show, and I always love seeing Cynthia and Kevin, and their dogs Zack and George. 

***

Dog of the Day

Met this guy - a youngster, four months old! - in a parking lot in Pawcatuck, CT. 

He might look fierce, but he was a dear.