In the Old Wooden Boat -- in progress

I started this last week -- it's from a slide that must be from 1960 or 61 in the Adirondacks.  That's my grandmother, mother, sisters and I'm the baby in the front seat with the white knit hat on.  Much more work to do on this, particularly on the faces of my sisters.  There's not much detail in them and there won't be, but the shapes of light and shadow aren't right yet.

Grandma's Card Game -- updated

here's an update, may still do more work on this but I love the way it feels now...

quick sketch from an old slide

I started a sketch today from a photo of my grandmother and friends playing cards.

Just having fun with these old images!

Old Family Photos -- Paintings? Updated!

continuing to refine this.... still not done...

Yesterday I had the amazing experience of seeing, for the first time, family photos from the late 1950s and 1960s that my sister found as slides and had converted to digital images.  There are pictures from the NY World's Fair, from my dad's time as a doctor on a Navy icebreaker, from summers in the Adirondacks and so much more.  The photos of my grandparents are particularly spectacular for their unreserved joy (photos then, as Facebook now, highlight the good times) and the eyeglasses, dresses, furniture and style that fixes them firmly in time.

Winter in my studio is often a time when I pull out old sketches, old paintings and photo references to consider work that was unfinished, unsatisfying or never undertaken.  I'm intrigued by the idea of taking some of these images and making paintings from them.

Not done yet... but getting there

I started one yesterday, from a photo of my grandmother as she is getting ready to board a cruise ship.  The old slide color is both heavily saturated and at the same time strangely cast from what I assume is the degrading of the chemicals that made the image.  The vivid color of her dress is something I'm going to stick with -- not sure that I'll keep what the slide shows as the violet color of the sea.

this is the start of the painting