Friday, December 5, 2014

Cambridge Street View 1984


This is the view out my old Cambridge studio window, that is, the window in the front, not the side view of the previous post. It's in autumn, obviously, and that bright red area is the shining leafage of a small red maple tree which is one of the many street trees in the area. Also note the blue mailbox which was always convenient for me (and the other residents of the neighborhood.). The granite blocks which form the curb have been there for a long, long time and one of them was still mounted with an iron ring which was where you tied up your horse when you stopped here. 

Looking back on these color sketches of Cambridge in 1984, it seems to me that I lived in a kind of peaceful nostalgic place of quiet Americana where I spent my time doing art and taking naps and talking to the neighbors. But while that was sometimes true, it's an illusion that it was always that way, as my journals of the time reveal. As an artist I can create the memory that leads you back to the peaceful quiet city neighborhood where you could still write and mail a letter on an autumn afternoon.

Brown technical pen ink and watercolor on sketchbook page, 7" x 7 1/2", November 8, 1984. Clickonthepic for a somewhat larger view. 

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