Everyday people are art lovers too

 

I believe in different brush strokes for different folks. I've always loved painting everyday people, and I want to make art for them. Art should not only be for the rich! Populism over elitism. Sure, I like hanging in nice houses. I've had a few cleaning ladies and even cleaning men tell me that they've seen my paintings in the houses they service and it felt good, but I felt as much gratification selling a painting to my first redneck as to my first millionaire.

 

If your car broke down on a country road and you knocked on the door of a farmhouse, you might encounter one of my paintings on the wall as you stumbled past clucking chickens. The young man pushing carts together at Food Lion may have one, too.

 

The strangest fable I’ve heard is that a visiting professor with Delaware roots sat down in the house of an Australian college professor and saw one of my paintings on his wall! One of the most gratifying places I've gone to is Return Day on The Circle in Georgetown.  Going back more than a hundred years, vendors have peddled their wares there for many Novembers. There's the roasting of the ox, and the sandwiches that follow if you’re willing to wait long enough in a lengthy public line as the smoke fills the air. I've painted it many times, and I love portraying the politicians, winners and losers of that year's recent election, all riding together in the horse-drawn carriages.

 

Another everyday people event peculiar to Sussex County is the Oyster Eat, which happens in February. It's supposedly a men-only event, and they gather with their personal oyster knives, squirting oyster juice and slurping them down along with many pitchers of Bud Light. I've had fantasies about slipping into this testosterone-drenched affair dressed as a man, but my husband Jeff warned me off.

 

Frans Hals, my favorite artist, was a painter of everyday people back in the 16th century, during a period called the Dutch Baroque era. He could catch a fleeting glance like no one else! He sported his own tankard for beer, the lid of which he flipped open often, and he painted mostly happy people, after careening down the watery canals with apprentices holding each arm lest he fall in.

 

Punkin Chunkin was another favorite venue for me. Orange is my favorite color, so pumpkins flying through the air above the faces of gaping fans was a fun and festive event to paint.

 

Some other artists and non-artists alike think that I offer my paintings for too little, but painting the people and events of Delaware is too gratifying for me to hold out for a bragging price! Wall space is like valuable real estate to most people, so it isn't only grabbing a bargain that motivates art lovers. 

 

The adventurers who don't mind a  raucous gathering would find my "Bikers' Bash at Augustine Inn" very interesting. There's always something new to discover each time you look. I hung it for sale in the Back Porch Café a number of years ago and my husband Jeff, who is definitely not a biker type, coveted it for his man cave. The biker chick in the middle might have been a young image of myself (like in the early 1980s) when I was known as the Purple Painter Lady with magenta-colored hair. Once when I was showing my art on the Bethany boardwalk, some bikers pulled up to my stand, purchased some, and pulled away with their passengers holding onto them on the back seat. They loved my tattooed mermaids!

 

The peoples' painter savant is getting sleepy; it's near the midnight hour, and Salieri beckons with his purse of coins. I often say that I'm both a night person and a day person. But sleep I must, since there are many paintings I must bring to life for my upcoming show in October at the Grand Opera House in Wilmington. As the saying goes, "Cats may look at kings," and I'm looking forward to revisiting the urban atmosphere of the city, always knowing that I will return to my beloved Milton and the Cape Gazette. I know for sure that there are "everyday people" at both ends of Delaware.