I found this painting while searching through my flat files the other day. It was given to me on my birthday by an elderly women when I worked in a convalescent home in high school.
St. Joseph Home for the Aged
Her name was Albina Blanchette (“Bina” for short), she was a retired piano teacher and a painter. Despite her age, she was pretty sharp and had a great sense of humor, we got along famously! When she discovered there was a fellow artist in her midst, she showed me some of her work and talked about her technique.
This particular painting was done by dipping a palette knife in paint and dragging it across a sheet of paper. Miss Blanchette would look at the results – this appeared to be a landscape with birds – she then went back in with a brush and worked on it. The final was cropped, glued to a piece of paper, and signed. I still marvel at her solution to the dreaded “blank canvas syndrome“. Her painting ended up in my flat files as a victim of many moves, but now that we’re reunited, I think I’ll find a little frame for it and hang it in my studio.
