Historic Painting

The month of January is always busy. There are year end things to do, tax stuff to find and get ready. It is not necessarily a fun time, just a lot of work. Today I found time to actually sit down and paint. I worked on a design by Barb Franzreb that is adapted from an actual painting by Rufus Porter.

Rufus Porter was, among other things, an itinerant artist in New England in the early 1800s. He traveled around painting murals for people who could not afford wallpaper. It certainly was a different time--today a mural is much more costly than putting up wallpaper. How times change! His murals were generally stylized landscapes. He used patterns and stencils in creating his murals. He considered himself a decorative artist and, indeed, used many of the same kinds of techniques used by decorative artists to this day.

This is a practice piece painted in acrylics on a lazy Susan found at a rummage sale. I will paint it again on a lazy Susan that will be used as a centerpiece for the Town and Country Decorative Painters retreat banquet in April. The theme this year is See the USA the Decorative Painter's Way. What better subject for my centerpiece contribution than a design adapted from one painted by a true early American decorative painter! The piece actually has some antiquing that dulls down the colors a bit. Unfortunately, the antiquing did not come out well in the photo.