Madison & 33rd | circa 1952

My father, a restaurateur in Manhattan, was an amateur photographer with a darkroom in our basement, where he developed his own photographs. I painted his restaurant in color from my memories of it and a black and white photo he took. If you enlarge the photo of the painting, you can make out his reflection in the front door—a faint figure in an overcoat and fedora. I had never painted a cityscape before, nor have I since, but painting Lomar Restaurant was special for me and my older sister, so I painted it for her for a special birthday and then painted it again for myself, calling it Madison & 33rd | circa 1952. When LightSpaceTime Online Gallery ran a competition for their 9th Annual Cityscapes Exhibition, it was the only painting I entered. Imagine my surprise and delight to hear that it was included in the exhibition and won Special Recognition in the Paintings and Other Media category, along with 49 other entries. A slide show of the exhibition will run for the month of February on lightspacetime.art. My father would have been proud…