Tag Archives: Coney Island

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Primary Colors Art Exhibition

I have often said that I love color, so the Primary Colors Arts Competition on www.lightspacetime.art seemed made for me, where at least one or more of the primary colors (red, blue and/or yellow) stood out as a primary artistic element in the artwork submitted. Now I am delighted to have won a Special Merit Award for Fantasy and Special Recognition for Steeplechase. There were 741 entries in the competition from 24 different countries around the world and 35 different states and D.C., so it’s an honor to be included among the award winners.

Fantasy

 

I painted Fantasy using old black and white movie posters from the 1930’s & 40’s of Loretta Young as my reference for the woman. I called the painting Fantasy, hoping it was ambiguous enough that some would think she is his fantasy and others think he is hers.

Steeplechase

 

I painted Steeplechase as a gift for my husband, who has great memories of his father taking him to George C. Tilyou’s Steeplechase Park in Coney Island to ride the mechanical ponies in a horserace, one of the highlights of his childhood.

 

The exhibition runs online through the month of July on http://www.lightspacetime.art.

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Primary Colors Art Exhibition

I have often said that I love color, so the Primary Colors Arts Competition on www.lightspacetime.art seemed made for me, where at least one or more of the primary colors (red, blue and/or yellow) stood out as a primary artistic element in the artwork submitted. Now I am delighted to have won a Special Merit Award for Fantasy and Special Recognition for Steeplechase. There were 741 entries in the competition from 24 different countries around the world and 35 different states and D.C., so it’s an honor to be included among the award winners.

Fantasy

 

I painted Fantasy using old black and white movie posters from the 1930’s & 40’s of Loretta Young as my reference for the woman. I called the painting Fantasy, hoping it was ambiguous enough that some would think she is his fantasy and others think he is hers.

Steeplechase

 

I painted Steeplechase as a gift for my husband, who has great memories of his father taking him to George C. Tilyou’s Steeplechase Park in Coney Island to ride the mechanical ponies in a horserace, one of the highlights of his childhood.

 

The exhibition runs online through the month of July on http://www.lightspacetime.art.

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What I Do For Love

Steeplechase

One of my husband’s best childhood memories comes from going to Coney Island–just a subway stop away from his home in Brighton Beach, but still a big treat for him when he was a kid. After the Nathan’s hot dogs, his favorite thing to do there was at George C. Tilyou’s Steeplechase Park, where he would ride a mechanical pony in the horserace course that ran two miles around the park to the finish line and gave the park its name. If his father had taken him or if he had enough money of his own (sometimes he didn’t), he’d always choose to go on the mechanical horserace ride.

A few months ago, he saw a piece in the New York Times about the rebuilding of Coney Island after the disaster that was Hurricane Sandy in New York. There were a bunch of old photos of the amusement park as it used to be in its heyday, including one of the grinning face that was the iconic symbol of Coney Island. It brought him back to a happy time during a not so happy time in his life, so he asked me to paint it for him. I find it hard to refuse him, though most of the people who saw me working on it could not understand why I would paint such a weird looking guy. The truth of the matter is, a portrait’s a portrait, and the same challenges face a portrait painter, no matter who the subject or how appealing. I’m happy to have survived painting all those teeth for him, especially when I see the smile on his face whenever he looks at Funny Face.

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The Weight of Water

We’ve always lived near the water–on the Atlantic when we were first married, on Long Island Sound where our kids were born, two blocks from the Atlantic for the last 40 years and on a man-made lake, complete with fish and birds, in Florida. When I was a kid, the beaches my family took me to–Far Rockaway, Atlantic Beach, Long Beach, Jones Beach, Coney Island, even Atlantic City–all had the same view: water, water everywhere, often plenty of surf, the horizon straight ahead. It was only when we moved to Boston that I became familiar with the rocky coast of New England. Quite a few of my artist friends paint these beaches with their brown sand and many rocks, large and small, coves cut into the landscape.

Marblehead | Winter

Marblehead | Winter

The studio I paint in is just across from Marblehead harbor, and last winter I saw a photograph someone had taken with just enough of that vast expanse of sea and sky to remind me of the beaches of my childhood. I painted that expanse on a square canvas and liked it enough to think that I should paint a larger version to hang in Florida. After spending most of February and March this winter in Boston, with some of the worst weather in years, I didn’t want to be reminded of winter in Marblehead when I was lucky enough to be in Florida. The view from South Ocean Boulevard in Palm Beach did the trick.  Peaceful.

Palm Beach | Winter

Palm Beach | Winter