Back in time

(C) 2015 Dale DiMauro

Since today was my birthday, I figured I would go back in time and display a painting I did when I was in high school in 1982. With my mom, I took an evening art course with Gregory Lysun, a very accomplished oil painter, at the Westchester County Center in White Plains, New York. At the time I was inspired by Norman Rockwell's small town community scenes. My father even helped me build the picture frame out of "door stop" from the local lumber yard. We used a table saw to miter the cuts and hammered the corners together by hand.

I loved the postures and body language then, as I still do now. To some it may seem unfinished, but adding more grass blades for example, would not make much of an improvement. The picture has sort of an innocent, direct, yet unworked over quality to it. The particular wooden ladders shown above you do not see so much these days.

Although this old oil painting is quite different from my recent watercolors, there are some similarities. I am still drawn to buildings and people as my subject matter.  Relatively few of my works are the expansive landscape scenes that have been popular with so many painters. While I frequently wander in nature, I tend to paint scenes from my neighborhood.