Posts Tagged: flowers

Plus Two Dollars

Plus Two Dollars 10-18-2013 lo-res

Plus Two Dollars

6″ x 6″ (15 x 15 cm) – oil on gessobord – SOLD

The second painting for the second show I am painting for. This one in California.

But let me tell you a story. I have this church down the block,  I am sure many of you have heard of it by now. Every year they have a rummage sale, and every year I go to hunt for props, and every time I hunt I score. A winning proposition :).

This year I went again and found a basket-full of mismachted bone china, bent silver spoons, a large shell with an ocean sound inside, and a set of 16 prints by Toulouse-Lautrec. Every object was a dollar or two. The fun started at earnest when I went to pay for my loot. The nice elderly gentleman was a singularly wrong person to manage the cash box! He decided to do the sums in his head and kept making mistakes in my favor. By the time he had 9, I had 11  and corrected him… by the time he had 14, I had 16 and corrected him again. All the while he wanted to talk about Lautrec, American realism, painting in general, and modeling for life sessions. In the end he got 18. I no longer believed him and gave him 20 – God bless!! 🙂

Here I have for you the three cups from the rummage sale… Plus the two dollars difference in our sums.

Tea for Three or The Rummage Sale

Tea for Three 7-24-13 lo-res

Tea for Three

6″ x 6″ (15 x 15 cm) – oil on gessobord – SOLD

This little painting started last summer at a rummage sale at a church down the block. I always go and always get some great props there. That time I found 3 mismatched cups with their saucers. Mismatched and all, they still worked together very well, probably being from the same era. I asked the lady to keep them for me so I could pay for everything together and went to a books section.

When I returned to pay for them, there was Father John, the Rector of the church, standing there with these cups in his hands, and the lady explaining to him that the cups were put aside for someone else. Oops!! I don’t belong to this church, but I know Father John (and his schnauzer), just like you know people in the neighborhood. I almost had him sit for a portrait for me. Besides I did not want the wrath of God on my head… you never know 🙂 … So I said – please Father John, have these cups. And he said – no, no, you got them first! And we went on like that – back and forth – for a while, but in the end I got the cups.

Every time I look at them I feel a little guilty, but not too much. After all I did get them first. And nothing bad has happened to me either – Father John really is a nice guy :).