Turbulent Times

  1967 was a turbulent time. Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement...Viet Nam War protests...Hippies, Flower Children and Haight Ashbury... 6 pm news with Walter Cronkite announcing in his sad grandfatherly voice, the body count from the day's battles in Viet Nam...the world was topsy turvy... and I was painting.
  Each night after dinner dishes were done I would go up to my room and sketch and paint. Magazine photos were my inspiration and my teaching tool. Black and white photos were still the standard. Look and Life magazine photo journalists captured the world and relayed it to us through full page spreads.
  I do not remember what the article was about, all I know was I was inspired by a photo of an old man. First I did a sketch and then I did a painting of him. My father loved the painting and it hung in our living room for sometime, but I, being the impatient artist had another inspiration for a painting. So the old man painting was gessoed over and another inspired image covered the canvas, but somewhere in time (Father's Day? Birthday?) I gave my father the sketch of the old man which I had decoupaged onto a scrap of distressed pine.
  Now 50 years later, and world is still awash in turbulent times, I look at the old man sketch and am reminded that inspiration, beauty, love and kindness are always available for those who chose to be it.
Old Man 6"x7 1/2" Pencil & Watercolor on newsprint/ Mary Anita Winklea 1967