Tuesday, March 22, 2011

WASHING UP, pages 1 & 2 in Ballookey's


I had two moles and this one arrived a little late--so patience please. I want to take the time to do my best possible job, though I sort blobbed this up a little.

It has a story. Onondaga Lake, in Syracuse, NY, where I used to live, is one of the most polluted lakes in the country if not the world. I was there one day walking and taking pictures when a migrant worker drove up in his pick-up truck, got out, and washed up in the toxic waters of the lake. A storm was approaching--I tried to tell him that the water wasn't clean, but he didn't understand me. I was thinking the storm was a figurative one as well as a literal one.

I had some problems with this, and may try it again sometime.

acrylic.

I still have two more pages to go in this, but I did get Gretchen's mole mailed. Yesterday. (This one was more than two weeks late getting to me, so patience, patience!)

13 comments:

One Woman's Thoughts said...

Oh how absolutely lovely the painting is.
Wouldn't it be nice if you could paint away the polllution?

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

I'd love to have a magic brush! That would be GREAT!

henniemavis said...

The sky is awesome! Really does look like a storm rolling in!

I miss Onondaga Lake Park. Tho the lake itself was polluted, that was a nice big open space very close to downtown. A quick place to go for a very long walk with nice naturescapes & cityscapes both.

mollypeck said...

This is beautiful (the image as well as the words, though sad)...

ballookey said...

Very cool, Mary - I love stormy skies and I like the story behind the lake as well. It's tragic, but you commemorated it appropriately and well. Poor old lake. If only companies would respect what everyone knows: Lakes aren't for dumping!

More than two weeks? ;) That's an understatement. I think if everything had been on time, you would have gotten it in July of last year! LOL. Take your time! Feel free to set it aside for other work now and then as you feel inspired. It's already so behind, a little more won't hurt.

ballookey said...

And I love the gulls!

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

Thank you all.

One of the reasons I blobbed this up is that I painted the whole sky in warm greys, but they looked BROWN to me, so I repainted it all, but the Paynes's grey I had had started drying up inside the tube and was all blobby and then, even though the tube seemed full, it ran out! Around the edges, you can see the old grey sky. (the brown one!) The brown sky was actually nicer, because the paint was better, as far the detailing in the clouds, but I didn't like it "brown!" WAHN!!

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

I miss Onondaga Lake Park, too! I liked it there. Not the pollution in the lake, but the park was nice. And the lake was pretty, if polluted.

roma said...

Wow, Mary, if you wouldn't have described what went wrong here, I would have never known! I still don't see it. Looks fabulous to me. It's such a serene scene; hard to imagine it being polluted.

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

The terrible irony is that parts of the lake are really very beautiful--it looks clear and pristine. (Maybe because the toxins kill all the life forms!)

(Of course, I neglected to paint in some floating trash.)

THANKS so much, Roma.

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

They've been talking about dredging the lake or dealing the sludge at the bottom, but since I've moved away from there, I don't hear the news any more.

Mike Kline said...

I love it! Beware of dredging the sludge - if it is anything like the San Antonio river walk the skeleton's might talk.

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

I know.

However, if you DON'T dredge, it is still there! :-(

An untenable situation--should never have been put there in the first place.

THANKS! :-D