Lollipop Painting

One of the best things about childhood is how care-free and natural it feels. A protected and safe child is free to explore the world and see it with his young eyes. Everything is new. Almost everything is of interest. It is a joyful time before the weight of the world of adults comes ‘round. In 2013, I went to Pontremoli, Italy, with my friend and colleague Kumiko Suzuki, to carve stone for their annual Medieval Festival in August. We were asked to carve huge chunks of horribly cracked marble, and make something worth keeping in just a few days and almost all by hand! The stone was in bad shape because it had been pulled out of the Magra River. Thus, most of my time in Pontremoli was working close to the water. And there, I watched the children play and frankly, wanted to join them. It was a relaxing weekend and reminded me of a simpler time. In this painting “Lollipop,” I not only wanted to capture that moment of the boy, oblivious to anyone else around him and just “being,” but also I wanted to paint with more texture [this is mostly a palette knife painting], get some depth into the image, and move away from the traditional skin-tone palette that I have learned in Florence, Italy. In fact, some years ago I was introduced to the work of Vojtěch Adalbert Hynais (1854 - 1925), a Czech painter. A friend got some great close-up photographs of some Hynais artwork he saw in Prague. The subtle shifts from cool to warm colors in the skin tones of the artist’s figures was much lovelier than anything I have seen on the Internet by Hynais. Subtlety has rarely been my strong point, but this is a direction for which to strive! Here is Lollipop and I hope it brings back memories of freedom from worry and a time in which we accepted our natural curiosities about everything. Painted on a wonderful 30-inch diameter circle maple wood professionally made panels for oil painting. They are an inch thick!