Happy New Year 2015

A Girl and her

Paintings

from Long Ago

When I graduated from Elmira College in 1966, I moved to Philadelphia and Richard and I set up housekeeping in Germantown, in an apartment on the third floor of a house across the street from the Germantown Cricket Club. I had a small studio in the apartment, and I started to paint.

What came forth were some paintings of fanciful women in elaborate costumes -- exactly what I am doing almost 50 years later. I was exploring my nascent interest in fashion.

Soon we moved to center city Philadelphia, to a two-floor loft on 10th Street near Chinatown, and I continued this figurative work.

 "Elmira"

 "The Ladies Floral Cabinet"

A man named Dr. Roland Gibson collected Richard's work. He taught economics at The State University of New York Potsdam in Potsdam, New York. He met Richard when he was visiting a friend who taught at Elmira College, were Richard taught, and he started to buy Richard's work.

After we moved to Philadelphia, Roland came to our loft and bought another of Richard's paintings, and he also bought my "Ladies Floral Cabinet," shown above. I was quite thrilled to sell it. Roland left his art collection of mostly Japanese abstract art to Potsdam when he died. Recently I contacted the Collections Manager at Potsdam who sent me this note.

"Your beautiful piece, "The Ladies' Floral Cabinet" has been enjoyed for quite awhile in the Dean's office in The Crane School of Music. It is now hanging in the SGA forum hall. Both your work and that of Richard's are thought of as valuable assets to The Permanent Collection."

 "The Butterfly's Assumption Gown"

In this painting are all the hallmarks of what I love:

color, abstract pattern, flowers and ribbons.

The name is from a poem by Emily Dickinson.

"The butterfly's assumption-gown,
In chrysoprase apartments hung,
This afternoon put on.

How condescending to descend,
And be of buttercups the friend
In a New England town!"

Me in the painting studio at Elmira College.

Geez, I look young.

On New Year's Eve, we lunched at the Odeon, a wonderful restaurant in Tribeca, with Jean and her friend Lou. Jean, of course, is one of the Idiosyncratic Fashionistas, the other being Valerie. As we were leaving the restaurant, we saw a lovely couple who had just gotten married at City Hall. We chatted with them and discovered that they were from Scotland. So to leave you in 2014, I give you the Scottish couple who are beginning a life together in New York City on the eve of 2015.

Bliadhna Mhath Ùr

Happy New Year and may

2015 be a good one for the world.

À Bientôt!