My First 40 Years

Rainy Day Studio     1986   Oil on Linen    20x28”    Collection of Sharon Walkey

This is what my studio looked like at Mass Art. I shared it with Tom Dempsey, and Frances Hamilton was in the room next door.
Sunny days are always days I feel I need to work hard and diligently, because the sun races across the sky and shifts shadows, and I have a limited time to get my colors right. Cloudy and rainy days are more consistent with colors, and one can work on the same painting almost the whole day because the sky is like a large, white umbrella, lighting everything below it fairly evenly… the color one sees is all local color – that is, the color of the object itself, not so influenced by the color of the light hitting it. For some reason I feel I can relax and enjoy painting on rainy days… I don’t feel as much pressure to perform and produce. This studio ensemble greeted me one morning upon entering my studio after a messy commute. It was so quiet and lovely, and I was the only one there… artists are notorious for sleeping in… but not me. So this became my cloudy day painting for a couple weeks, showing a still life I was working on at the side, a sunny day painting on the easel, and the garbage can I’d painted with a palette knife (number 15).