 A
selection of paintings, 1955-7.
Harrison Street and the landscapes of travel.
Click
here for Harrison Street 1b, Landscapes of the Imagination.
Many of these paintings are lost or unavailable.
Size and medium is given only if known.
Scroll down for the paintings, click the
thumbnails for larger images.
|
The announcement from my show of this work
at the 6 Gallery in September 1957.
We did things cheaply in those days. The
picture postcard gallery announcements of today did not exist, and I
mimeographed the text and marbelized the cards myself. The
paintings were souvenirs of my passage to the ivory tower,
incontrovertible evidence of my apostasy from the thrill of the march
of the avant garde. I did not want to take any work
home after the show and so offered the paintings "real cheap."
"Everybody" bought one, and even today the souvenirs of my long ago
passage turn up in the art re-sale market .
*
We had come back
to live in our College Avenue place in Berkeley in the summer of 1953
so we could get out of Maxwell and my public school teaching by my
getting an MA at UC Berkeley. By the fall of 1954, I had the MA
and begun my job at the Oakland Art Museum. We moved into our
house on Harrison Street sometime in 1955.
I had already begun
working from travel imagery--copies of engravings in old travel
books, primarily the "Landscape Annuals" published in London in the
1830's with illustrations from Prout--while we were on College Avenue. These continued during
the early years on Harrison, multiplied many fold by the many, many
small wooden and cardboard panels that came from working at the museum
where we were perpetually making mats and cutting plywood panels for
installations.
My second show at the 6 Gallery in San Francisco
consisted of these--it seemed like hundred of them. I did not want the bother of taking the
paintings home after the show, and so priced them at anywhere from
$0.50 to a couple of dollars. Everyone bought one--from Elmer
Bischoff and Dick Diebenkorn to then students Joan Brown and Jose
Lerma In the years after, whenever I needed a gift for a friend,
one of these was so often it. Now, only a few remain.
|
| |
|
|
|
The Landscape Annual, Spain, 1834 |
Seville, the Giralda Tower.
Oil on panel, approx 14 x 10 in.
Collection Jeremy Olson,
San Francisco. |
The Landscape Annual, Italy, 1832 |
Rome, Castel St. Angelo
and the Tiber.
Oil on panel, approx. 12 x 14 in.
(Present location unknown) |
| |
|
|
| |
|
It was beginning then I imagined Venice the city of the senses
ageing in time, and Rome the city of time's ageing in eternity. |
The Landscape Annual, Italy, 1832 |
St. Mark's Square, Venice.
Oil on panel, approx. 12 x 16 in.
(Present location unknown) |
Venice, the Lagoon.
Oil on canvas, approx. 16 x 18 in.
Coll. Stephanie Dudek,
Montreal, Canada. |
Venice, the Column with the Crystal.
Oil on canvas, approx. 18x 24 in.
Coll. Mr. and Mrs. Demian Martin
San Leandro, CA. |
And then when evening comes in Venice
January 5, 1986
|
The Venice of the islands
January 20, 1986 |
Venice last lesson
January 26, 1986
Click for more of the 1986
Venetian watercolors.
|
Piranesi II, Antichita Romanae
June 22, 1986
Click for more of the 1986
Roman watercolors.
|
| |
Click the image for Harrison Street
and the landscapes of the imagination
 |
|
| |
Click for an extended text about this work
|
|
|
|
