Old Is New Again

In an attempt to create a more contemporary treatment of my favorite subject, cars, I started by by skewing the composition. This car was not actually climbing a hill, just posed for take off. Recently I've been drawn to mixed media collages - innumerable layers of brilliant colors signifying something or nothing as the case may be. What would I do for the background? Or more importantly, why was I painting a Nash in the first place? Perhaps both questions could be solved together. So I wrote what this car meant to me. I would paint the words into the background. But then would the words dominate the car? Should they wrap around the car or read like a regular page interrupted by the car? So you can see my dilemma.

I decided that each effort could stand on its own merit - the painting and the remarks. So the background became a loose collection of vibrant marks - which I discovered looked a little like tire tracks. And here are the results.

My freckled little brother sat between our mother and father. His car seat was held securely in place by two metal arms that curved over the back of the front seat. My brother was blonde just like our Dad, but Dad's hands were dark with grease and oil from his job as a mechanic. He worked long hours yet always had time to help others with their ailing vehicles. Dad had lots of car stories. My brother was too young to understand the finer points of standard transmission repair or installation of those new directional signals. But what my brother could always do was spot a Nash. Regardless of the vintage or model, he would point his finger and shout, "At's a Nash" and he was always right.