ROOSTERS AND A LINE OF SKATING GIRLS

I'm on my electric tricycle and I   go for a ride at about ten every morning.

Four homes on this route have chickens with roosters and as I pass, I give my version of a rooster crow.  They've gotten  to know me, somehow, and now will usually beat me to the crow...(damned egotists). :-)

I kept chickens as a kid...also white rabbits, six nanny goats, a loft of white pigeons, four muscovy ducks and a dog named "BO BO"...about the dog...I still keep a "BO BO" but it's a fake.

We might like a live one, but the vets in our town treat pets like children and they really run up huge bills for care.  So we pass.

This A.M. as I was nearing the park, a line of girls on skates were approaching.  I stopped my trike and got my camera out...the lead girl hollered "Picture" and caused great disorder in the line...folks really like to look good in a picture. you can be sure of it.

The reason I'm on an electric assist tricycle is my age and safety concerns.  I really love the thing and I call it my Cadillac.  It really is a lifesaver because I have to peddle to make it operate.  My other electric bike is full on power, no peddling required...but I really need the exercise of peddling.
                                                                                ELBERT

SHIRLEY'S PORTRAIT

                                               Shirley's Portrait      


I've always kept the photo that I took of Shirley, taken when she was with the mall.  She was about thirty-nine and we were dating.  I decided to paint the portrait including events in her history.  In the far background is "Eva" the mail and passenger boat owned and captained by her Grandfather, Ed Calhoun.  He also organized the local fur trapping on Johnsons Bayou. She lived with them for the first five years of her childhood.
The hay stacks and tractor represent the annual hay mowing that she did.
Ole Billy was actually sort of brownish but I needed his coat to be white.  The sunflowers were other loves of her early years.  The huge wooden palette, we had both used in past studio sessions.
She looked good at thirty-nine...so at least on my canvas, she gets to stay there.

                                           Shirley Picking Figs

We've been picking figs for two month.  Shirley finally agreed to allow me to preserve two dozen with added lemon and a little sugar.  i split them into quarters.  WHAT A TREAT! (I gained four pounds).  Elbert

                                           Elbert's Fig Preserves

PARTY TREAT... DARK CHOCOLATE (85%) SMEARED GRAHAMS

Dark Chocolate Grahams

When I was a teenager, I sometimes worked unloading boxcars of produce for a local merchant. I got tired eventually and would buy dark chocolate covered grahams. I supposed they must have dunked them.

Those aren't.around today and I was reminiscing... so I asked Shirley to make some using my 85% cocoa dark chocolate (which isn't very sweet), add nutrasweet to it to improve taste and smear it on the top of a few grahams for me. She did a good job and these taste much like the old ones, but better.

I add this in case you are letching for dark chocolate grahams also but cant find them anywhere... 

Old loves die hard, don't they. Elbert.

ABOUT GEORGE RODRIGUE'S BLUE DOG

BLUE DOG

I've recently learned that George Rodrigue had died...I've met George several times  at shows while I still lived in Louisiana and I liked him, 

While I knew him, he was trying to get his old time Louisiana theme to work for him and was having some success.  He had a gallery in the French Quarters of New Orleans as well.  

We live in California now and he came to my notice again when he had a show in L. A. and his own gallery on Rodeo Drive.  It was featuring the "Blue Dog" theme.  He also had acquired a first class publicist and she was his WIFE.  She did a great job keeping his art out there.

I'm sure that the owners of his original "Blue Dog" paintings are glad they bought one.

I'm also sure that his publicist will be eagerly sought out by a new artist.

Elbert

sketch of "Blue Dog" by Elbert Price

Elbert Price and George Rodrigue at book signing in Lake Charles, La. at the Prien Lake Mall in 1976

  

CAUGHT IN THE ACT

"Caught In The Act"

She drove into the art school parking lot in a grey Rolls Royce Corniche convertible with the top down. Her coiffure looked like the stable hand had done it, totally beyond casual. She was about five feet seven inches tall and very attractive... I'm saying "this can't be our model".  She wasn't.  Our model didn't show at start time.

I said "To hell with the model, I'm going to sculpt her".  So I sat up across the studio  and began my portrait blank in preparation. The model came and the class began. 

I sneaked shot several photos of my intended model before she spotted me and delivered a look that clearly said my attention was most unwelcome. I went back to my work and tried not to notice but it was wasted activity.  She took a look at my results and left, never to return.  I always regretted offending her and I know that I did.  I had to complete the sculpture from my photos of her.

 Elbert

THE SECOND ROCK AT ALICE KECK

"The Second Rock At Alice Keck"

In the current dry conditions of our early summer (little rain since last spring) our Ventura River has gone to the look of a desolated white stone skeleton of it's previous self.  I miss it so much that today I painted a reminder of a painting that went to a lady doctor many years ago

When the doctor visited my El Paseo Studio in Santa Barbara, many years ago, she was on her journey to a field assignment in the Sudan, as I recall, and was unable to take a large painting along.  She promised to call upon her return.  I was impressed.

About three and a half years later, she called, asking whether the painting was still available... and she said "I am on a gurney in preparation to deliver my first baby and my husband said I could have anything.  I want my "Rock" painting".

We were both pleased.  Elbert

painting by Elbert Price

THE ROCK AT ALICE KECK