Fairfield Porter

This is"Penobscot Bay with Peak Island"

How did I grow old never having seen a painting by Fairfield Porter?  I'd heard his name - - someone I knew when I was much much younger called him a great "representationalist" painter, or some thing like that. Not the word "realist", which I might have understood better.

This summer at the Parrish Art Museum on the east end of Long Island had an exhibit of his paintings - - it seems that he lived in Southampton.  And he painted many things there.  Not a lot of detail, but the essence seems to be all there.  And when he died in 1975, his widow gave most of what was in his studio to the Parrish Art Museum.  Including unfinished paintings and some on board; those have never been exhibited. Or so I am told.

Gallery 8 in the Parrish Art Museum is all Porters - this is just a bit of it.

He wrote somewhere:   "The realist thinks he knows ahead of time what reality is, and the abstract artist what art is, but it is in its formality that realist art excels, and the best abstract art communicates an overwhelming sense of reality."

I'll probably now start looking for his paintings everywhere.

This is called "Wild Roses".

Joe and Ray go on diets!

Both my husband and our son are tall - both over six feet.  And both of them used to be quite slim and trim. That was then.  But not now.   When we spent five days with our son and his family at their vacation home a few weeks ago, they apparently decided that enough is enough.  (No, I didn't photograph their large bellies in the swimming pool.)  Joe told me that he weighed about 230 and that Ray weighed about 235.  And that they were going to loose some of those pounds.  I cannot think of a more supportive weight-loss companion than an immediate family member. I'm cheering them on.

Now Ray has notes for us that he's lost 10 pounds.  That's something like 4% (or a bit more) of his starting weight - - so keep up the good work.

But Joe?  He has always been reticent about precision, so I'll probably never know just how much weight he's lost.  Shall I just have to look at his belly more closely?  He has told me that he's using a new hole on his belt, so if he's tightening his belt, doesn't that indicate something positive is happening.

One thing that Joe has been doing in the past few months is walking to early morning "old guys" get-together. They meet early in the morning at a McDonald's that is almost exactly 1.5 miles away.  Sometimes he gets a ride home; sometimes he walks home; and sometimes he goes with a friend to another fast-food joint.  So long as he just drinks the coffee, the diet will be happy.

When I can scan some older photos of these men when they were slim(mer), I'll post them. ~~~ AND I FOUND SOME!  From not too long ago ~~~

This photo of Joe  was taken when we visited Paris in June 2007.  Looks pretty good, n'est pas?

And Ray, in Manhattan, in 2004