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Easter Basket, Tempera on Paper
This weekend my husband and I have been working on a DVD of my collage process. When I talk about myself and my art at workshops, in my bio, and on this DVD, I often tell people that I always knew I wanted to be an artist. I say that I can remember the first painting I ever did, and it's true... I was in Kindergarten at Moseley School in Western Massachusetts, it was spring and we were painting Easter scenes. We had to don a trash bag smock and take turns going into the hallway to work at one miniature easel that had baby food jars of paint set into a wood shelf at the bottom. We got to use those big fat brushes that they give little kids, and I can still smell the tempera paint! (this art, by the way, is a blue easter basket with green grass and pink eggs and lots of colorful clouds)
My mother did me a wonderful favor, she kept this painting for me until I was an adult. When I went to collage, I took this painting with me and managed to keep it safe until many years after I graduated. When I moved to Florida and got my first job in marketing, I was voted "employee of the month" and received a check for $100. I used that money to frame my first painting.
Today this painting hangs in my daughter's room with the little photo of me and this artwork stuck into the lower right hand edge of the frame.
What a delightful way to start a wonderful. lifelong journey. I loved the story and the painting's refreshing, too.
ReplyDeleteThanks Sandy, sometimes I forget how long I have loved art, until I see that painting in my daughter's room and I remember.... so I know that I was born this way!
ReplyDeleteHow special to have kept that first painting - and to know instantly that's what you were to do! Good for staying true to it!
ReplyDeleteI'm assuming that this is the photo of you and the painting. Now I'm waiting for a photo of your daughter with the painting, complete with your childhood photo.
ReplyDeleteIt' really is good to know that one is born to the work. I have vivid memories of painting on glass with oils at our neighbor's house, all the paint by number kits I did, and even painting on bisque dolls. We had no formal art classes or artists in our town, no galleries, no concept of ART, yet I took advantage of all things artistic, even then... as you did.