So I started painting again, but painting what? So far just colors, layers of colors, trying to feel out what I really want to paint again. The action of spreading the paint on a canvas feels good in my hand, so that's been okay so far, but now I'm hankering for a project.
Last night, I think I realized what I want to paint: front doors. I mean doorways painted on canvas. Entrances of East coast rowhouses from the 1800s. Doors and frames and the steps leading up to them, and any other part of the building that might be visible in the space provided by the canvas. Doors with ornamental trim and ivy growing nearby. Big old solid doors leading inside narrow homes.
If I can dig up legible photos of them, I would like to paint the entrances of the two apartment buildings in which I lived in Baltimore years and years ago (one on St. Paul Street in the Mount Vernon neighborhood, and one on Park Avenue in the Bolton Hill neighborhood) as well as the red door in Frederick, Maryland at Market and 2nd.
I would also like to paint doorways I photographed in Venice in 1994, and doorways I loved in Washington, D.C., and doorways I romanticize in New York City's Greenwich Village where I have only ever visited once, very briefly, but adore in movies and photos. Doorways I romanticize in London and Paris and other European cities and have only ever seen in movies and books.
Anyway, now I have something I am excited about painting, a series of something. I'm going to start this weekend.
If I'm still excited about painting doorways by the time the warm weather returns, I will go searching for doorways of interest in Seattle, and sketch them. I will have to brave the hobos of Pioneer Square again. Closer to home, the Anhalt buildings appeal to me (although perhaps their windows hold greater appeal than the doors, so I might have to expand to windows). I dream of living in one of those buildings.
Also closer to home, the other project I want to start is Homebody's Guide to Capitol Hill. I would like to create an idiosyncratic guide to my favorite places, ideally in the form of a little website, although that will require software and skills I do not currently have a my disposal. I want to create a base map, partly hand-drawn and hand-painted because I want it to look hand-made, and partly digitally-generated because I want it to be to scale, not missing any streets, and able to align to GPS coordinates and such. I will also write things about, and take/make pictures of, my favorite places. Finally, I would like to put it all together in a clickable map with links to other websites and resources, and maybe an index and contents category. I have no idea who else would actually use this guide, but want to make it just for the fun of making it (so says she before she takes the first step in creating the map).
