Favorite things---the things in the song.

Trying to straighten out the window in the painting---which makes everything else "kittywhompus".

This is a painting of the things I would like to see if I ever make it to Switzerland.  I know nothing is proportioned "right" in this.  The scale is all wrong.  The chalet should be larger.  The chalet was painted long after I painted the rest of it. 

Axel the dog in a wheat field

Painting with man and lady. 

Car, dresser, hand, hammer etc.

"Electrical" collage

Can you find the items:
raindrops on roses
whiskers on kittens
bright copper kettles
warm woolen mittens
brown paper packages tied up with strings
cream colored ponies
crisp apple strudels
doorbells
sleigh bells
schnitzel with noodles
wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings
girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes
snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes
silver white winters that melt into springs

Axel was a German Shepherd mix that my grandpa had at his farm.  It was a really wonderful dog.  I named him... I was in high school.  We watched the mini series "Centennial" on what I remember were Sunday evenings.  (I could be wrong.) My grandfather and I watched it while my grandmother was at Church in the evening.  There was what I remembered to be a German character on there named Axel.  I named the dog Axel because it sounded German.  One day, I took this black and white photo of Axel in a wheat field.  I was probably using the old Kodak 620 roll film.  The wheat was not very tall and so it was still green.  You can't tell that from the photo. I was facing west when I took the photo.  The field was a bit north of the old farm house. In the photograph you can barely see Axel over the wheat.  He is almost a speck in the photo. I painted the "Axel" in the painting so that you could tell there was a dog in the picture.  I tried to paint the sky that I saw in a Marlboro ad in a British magazine.  The ad showed a radio station sign and pickup truck on a Texas road at sunrise.  You wouldn't see sunrise if you faced the western sky---so there is an inaccuracy in the sky. This was painted around the time of the Swiss painting, and the Favorite things.

I was influenced by the "new wave" music and fashion that was popular at the time.  I also liked art deco stuff.  I was drawing on paper one day.  I think I drew the triangle of the "head dress" first.  Then I drew the face and the rest of the man.  Eventually I reversed the man and traced him onto this board.  I had hoped to paint the man's suit as a sort of bright pinkish color fading or morphing into the blue.  (or was it the blue morphing into pink?)  I couldn't figure out how to do that.  I never finished this. The cutouts for the glass in the cupboard, are from the original drawing I did.  I based the design on these pieces of a broken pane of glass which I pieced together from my grandfather's farm. The design you saw in frosted glass was close to what I drew.  Of course I didn't have a whole pane of glass in the end, so I only know how part of the design went. I just assumed that the rest went like what I had already. The palm tree should be taller and really, it should be a different plant altogether.  The woman is a (silent?) movie star I traced out of a book.  Of course the face and hair look nothing like the original.  The dress was a different color too. I wanted to paint "French" doors leading out to a balcony with probably a full moon etc.  I couldn't figure out how to paint that either.  So I tried to paint sheer curtains over the "French" doors which allow you to see a "hint" of the night through them.  By the way, this one was probably painted with "hand me down" brushes from my mother.  She gave me some really nice brushes that she used to paint with oils.  They had gotten hard for some reason.  So, I used bleach to soften them up a bit. That's probably not the way you treat good paint brushes. I might still have one laying around here somewhere.  It has seen better days though if I still have it.

I forget what I called this one too. At first glance it could be an "homage" (aumage --- aumaж) to Surrealism or some sort of "modern" art.  The reality is much more simple than that.  I painted this after we moved here (1989).  I don't think we were here long.  (not sure though)  We had just bought this board and some paint.  I was itching to try out the paint. It had been a while since I painted anything. I mentally divided the board into sections. I painted the objects as practice.  It isn't meant as a unified "painting" as such.  It is just practice.  Some of the objects are "incongruous", like the paint falling off the table and the hand "hanging" the paint pallet as if it were the art work.  I even tried to paint a brown swatch to look like it were a paint brush stuck to the pallet at a right angle. This painting has always reminded me of a story I heard.  There is this story, I don't know if it is true or if it is a myth.  I tried to "Google" for it, but didn't know what words to type in to find the story.  Somebody was in a famous artist's studio.  They saw the drop cloth and thought it looked nice.  They put the drop cloth in the exhibition.  I don't remember who the artist was or is. 

I did this in high school too. The light bulb was a "good" one at one time.  Naturally my grandfather kept "burnt out" light bulbs in the cupboard with the "good" ones.  I went to throw out a light bulb once, and he told me to put it in the box with the rest.  Another day down the road, I got tired of having to try out all the light bulbs when I went to change light bulbs.  I threw all the "burnt out" ones away.  Then I got the "bug" to do this collage.  I couldn't find a burnt out light bulb anywhere, and "had" to use a good one.  I found the board covered in this burlap like fabric in a closet. My mother had put an "artificial" flower arrangement on it.  It had a nice late 1960's early 1970's frame on it.  It was probably some large hideous thing.  I remember the arrangement. It had one of those seed pods that were popular back then.  I don't know how to describe it, but I can see one in my mind.  Look up "Egyptian Lotus flower seed pod" and you will know what it looked like.  It was a neat arrangement back in the day.  It was once found hanging in my grandmother's bathroom maybe?  I guess that "look" got "tired" and they stuck it in a closet.  Well, I asked if I could have it.  I took the frame off and the flowers.  (Yuck! Plastic flowers)  This is a collage of "found" objects.  The brown switch plate, and the rusted pieces of electrical "plug" were found at my grandfather's farm. There was a roll of electrical tape in the house? Or maybe I bought that myself somewhere.  The wire may have come from the cord that once had the modern "plug" at one end. I am not sure where the wire came from.  It might have come out of the kitchen drawer that held a bit of everything.   I don't know where I got the white switch plate.  I probably found the broken switch, and the broken outlet "cannibalized" for this piece "around the house".  People who lived during the Great Depression usually kept things---even broken things, thinking that some day there might be a use for them. "We might need that"...  I know this is sort of "strange" art.  I did it when I was into all that weird art.  I did do stranger things yet.  This is one of the few things to survive.  I got rid of some of it.