20″ x 20″ — Oil/Canvas — 2009
• SOLD

The Manual of Psychology belonged to a law student in 1905. My mother-in-law’s mother-in-law was the housekeeper for the gentleman lawyer decades after his schooling. After he passed away, she was given all his books as they were something she admired.

I have the book sitting in front of me. As I casually flipped it open, it landed on a page discussing spacial perception. One hundred and four years ago the student scrawled the word chiaroscuro beside the phrase “The play of light and shade…”. I find it curious that I’d flip open an ancient psychology text and by chance fall on a page explaining visual concepts used by artists — the use of light and shadow to create a sense of depth.

Is this book trying to tell me something?

24″ x 20″ — Oil/Canvas — 2009
• SOLD

This is another composition with the early 1960s children’s book, It’s Story Time. I had fun with with a triangular composition which I think works well with the overall simplicity of the shapes in my work.

My four-year-old daughter was flipping through book and was fascinated by the illustrations. She was inspired and did a little sketch of a bird and left it as a gift for me.

30″ x 36″ — Oil/Canvas — 2009
• SOLD

I frequently visit the website Shorpy.com, which features high resolution photographs from the 1850s to 1950s. Their tag-line is true, there always is something interesting there.

I was pleasantly surprised to find these two images; the first is of the Underwood Typewriter Co.’s office in Washington, D.C. around 1919. Second photograph is the “Office Girls” from 1925. The girl on the left is hard at work on her Underwood. Click on the images to visit the site and you can find super-mega-high resolution scans with incredible detail.

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