tiny clown long wait

In July 2006, I began my first large painting on canvas – at least, it felt like a large painting at the time. A 12 x 36 inch canvas, a tiny clown sitting at one end of a very long bus stop bench. There were several others waiting for the bus too: a lady in pink, a man named Bob, a big gramma with a tiny baby, a man with a broken leg reading a newspaper, a dancer in pointe shoes, her pink-haired sister, a nun, and a couple of boxers with their arms around each other.

One night when the painting was finished a friend came to dinner and said, “Isn’t this the first painting in your children’s story?”

I stared at him. And that’s where my first story in paintings began.

I bought two more canvases. The completed painting couldn’t be the first painting in the story, there were too many people on the bench. Where would it begin? Just the clown. A week later, tiny clown long wait #1 finished, I wondered: who arrives next? For the next four months I followed the story from one painting to the next, never knowing where it would lead. Nine weeks into the journey I caught up to my original painting and continued. Eventually the bus came and left with all the passengers. The clown was still sitting there waiting. What was he waiting for? I didn’t know. And then, finally….I did.