October 2, 2015

October 2, 2015

Car songs were big in the early 60s.  Remember ‘Hey, Little Cobra’, ‘GTO’, ‘Drag City’, ‘Little Deuce Coup’, Mustang Sally’, ‘409’, or ‘Route 66’ to name a few.  Well I decided to do ‘Little Old Lady from Pasadena.’  I wanted to put her brand new, shiny red, super-stock Dodge at the corner of Colorado Boulevard.  So I looked up images of the street and of a super-stock Dodge.  I worked on the piece for a couple of weeks and put it aside.  I had put myself into a tough spot by using a 1 foot by 3 foot canvas to get the length of the street.  The lines of perspective were difficult to maintain with the buildings and road.  But after a 3 month hiatus, I knew that I had to get back to work and figure out how to complete the piece.  So I ignored the street and buildings and worked on the cars first.  The car bodies are collaged from road maps painted with Twinkling H2O paints.  Of course the little old lady’s Dodge is done on maps of southern California—you can see Pasadena on the side of the car.  After doing the cars, I decided that my mistake was in painting the buildings.  All of those long straight lines were difficult (for me) to paint, so I went back to collage.  The buildings are now a mixture of paint and collage.  I used vellum for the glass on the cars as well as the building windows.  The little old lady is waiting at the light and two young men in the next car are ready to race.  I hope this piece brings back memories for those of us who grew up in this era.  (Go granny, go granny, go granny, go.)