Not quite a painting of my neighborhood bar

The first ten years my husband and I lived together, we lived in five different cities. We tried to immerse ourselves in our communities as much as possible, but we always knew we’d be moving on. We very much looked forward to a time when we could settle down, really get to know our neighbors, and maybe even become regulars at our local coffee shop and watering hole. 

We moved home to Portland in 2020 and bought our first house in November of 2021. As people started to emerge from winter hibernation the following March, we quickly met most of our neighbors and learned about the hidden gem of bar eight blocks away. Unassuming from the street – practically hidden by the tulip trees that bloom in the spring – friendly (the kind of place where everybody knows your name), serving up the perfect spectrum of cheap beer to craft cocktails, and cooking great food…it was everything we wanted and more.

I snapped the above photo as we walked there for the first time, full of the wonder of spring and the anticipation of discovering our new neighborhood.

A month or so later, I was preparing to paint a collection of abstract landscapes and I sketched this little 3”x3” scene in oil pastel (left picture below) – hoping to capture the magnificence of the blooming trees and the feeling of a spring evening. I loved the sketch. It was perfect. My favorite on a page of nine sketches. I jumped right into trying to translate it to a 24”x24” painting (circled canvas in middle picture below). It didn’t work and after some fussing, I painted over it entirely.

Fast forward to this spring (three years later), and I was still captivated by that little sketch. I again tried to paint it (right picture), this time on a 6”x6” wood panel. That didn’t work either.

So, I paused to identify what I liked about the scene: 1. The color of the sky. 2. The pink and yellow. 3. The diagonal lines of the sidewalk and street. When I started painting over the 6”x6,” I made sure to keep some of those elements. I wound up with the 6”x6” painting below, which I felt was perfect. So good, in fact, that I wanted to make a bigger version. Note that a lot of what I like about many of my paintings are the “happy accidents” or surprises created from the results of layers of color and texture. So painting the “same” image at a larger scale isn’t particularly easy.

But, I went for it with gusto on a 40”x40” canvas (that had actually started as something very different!) and I couldn’t love the finished painting more. I feel like this degree and style of abstraction is something I have been searching for for a long time. The painting is called “Neighborhood Bar #2.” It, and a big handful of other new paintings, will be available on June 6. Sign up for my email list at the bottom of the page for first dibs.