The countryside between Ipswich and Essex Massachusetts along Route 133 was pretty nice. I had to stop my car one day along the road and paint this watercolor, minus the cartoon-like business men shaking hands. I added them later.

We lived in Rockport, and Gloucester was right next door. In East Gloucester there is an art colony. One day I visited a studio there and enjoyed the artist’s paintings from the 1940s. Regional painting is one of my favorite styles (Thomas Hart Benton, &c.) We talked. He said when someone wants to buy one of his older paintings (hung high out of reach in the studio) he would call his wife first and they would talk about it. They liked to hold onto that work, and I don’t blame them. : )

This painting, above, is of course not in the regionalist style, but the scene caught my eye. It is from Gloucester and was painted probably the same week that I visited Chip Pelletier at the gas station and painted his portrait, below:

This is the only photo I have of the painting of Chip at the gas station. It was taken at an art show at Salem’s old custom house and someone called it the gem of the show. It sold to a friend of mine. I liked the picture.

I thought I was getting a little out of painting, so I took an oil painting class. By now Montserrat College of Art moved to my old elementary school, Hardie School. Good memories. Funny to be there now for art classes. I first began drawing in fourth grade here. We sat outside on the hill then with a visiting art teacher and she said we could draw anything we wanted. Wow. It was magic when I noticed my drawing of a house at the intersection was a fair representation. For at least a year I took out the same “How to draw…” books from the library. Renewing them and renewing them. I must have liked it.

We came back from the South and got married.

While waiting for Rory at the Marathon Library I sketched the beauty of that place. The small tree-lined parking lot of the library is beautiful in itself, but across Rt 1 children were at recess, and the huge palm branches, magnificent.