Searching for color

One of Sue’s eyes still doesn’t focus properly, but she sees color much more vividly than before cataract surgery, and she’s enjoying acrylic paints for the intensity of the pigment. She wants to shift from portraits to buildings—houses, mostly—and we went out searching for colorful ones in Portland. Most houses here are painted in boring colors: beige, white, grey, or some shade of green; but a few of them are salmon, butterscotch, vivid blue, or touched up with red accents. We went out Sunday morning, searching for some colorful houses to photograph, so she could put them on her iPad and paint from them. 

Back at home and fortified with anti-histamines, I searched on the internet for paintings to inspire Sue and discovered the brilliant Vera Tamari (scroll down to see the paintings), a Palestinian artist and art teacher. I could only find four of Tamari’s paintings, but I love them. Tamari also does clay reliefs and other sculptures. She’s a fascinating artist and art teacher with a large body of work, of which these paintings are a small part. I hope she is safe where she lives on the West Bank.