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Saturday, July 6, 2013

What's in your basement?


While I was in the basement looking for something I came across this painting, a portrait done when I was a student. It's about 18" X 24" and still framed. When you are a student in art school it sometimes takes a long time before you produce something of quality. Sure, I did a lot of portraits before this one, but would I show them to you ---- no!! In fact, most of the time we would do our daily portrait and just wash them off the canvas with turpentine and paint on that same canvas the next day. Every once in a while you would do something a step ahead and this is one of those, so I saved it. OK, well maybe the basement isn't the best place for it, but so be it, covered in dust and spider webs. Secondly is the smaller painting, an 8" X 10" plein air painting done about 20 years ago. It turned out well. It's never been shown and now the frame is stained, but it was a step ahead in plein air work for me at the time. We can only imagine how many of the paintings of Rembrandt, Rubens and the like were hidden in the basement, a closet, under the bed and brought out years later to hang in the museum.