My Darlin' and I were coming home from church this morning, and I stopped by the office to pick up a list of FHA clients. (My office is 45 minutes from our home in the Tucson Mountains.)
I'm not usually in town on Sunday, but here we were, traveling west on Grant Road. As I approached the intersection at Campbell, I noticed a man on the corner, painting a picture.
It's a busy intersection, and we had the green light, so I couldn't change lanes immediately. "I've got to go back and take a picture," I said. "There's a story back there on the corner." "Don't get us killed," was the quiet reply from the passenger seat, "we haven't had lunch yet." LOL
The artist is Dale Strong, and he's painting an Arizona Mission series of paintings. In the 1600's, Father Eusebio Kino founded a number of missions in what is now southern Arizona. Four of them remain, either in part or completely restored.
Dale Strong is an accomplished artist, and his paintings grace the homes or estates of former Vice President Walter Mondale, Luciano Pavarotti, Johnny Carson, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, to mention a few.
Dale paints with oils, but doesn't use a brush. Instead, he uses two iced tea spoons he modified by taping them to a railroad track back 1970's.
One of the flattened spoons retains its rounded edge, and Dale uses it to blend color directly on the canvas (a wet-on-wet technique called impasto.) His inspiration? Vincent Van Gogh. The second spoon is ground down to provide an edge with which Dale creates fine lines and detail in his paintings.
Camera in hand, I apologized for interrupting his work, and asked Mr. Strong if I could take a few photos. What a gracious man! I explained that you and others on the Active Rain Real Estate Network would be reading this post, so he invited me in to the gallery to meet the owner--Henry.
Henry El Kaim is a young guy like me. (1948!) Henry is an artist in glass, among other media, and when I mentioned that my Darlin' was waiting in the car, he made her a gift of an exquisite little stained glass angel!
Don't visit Tucson without checking out this beautiful little gallery. Come on the weekend, and you're likely to see artists creating their work outside on the corner! Here's a link to a map of the location.
I'm Mike in Tucson, your preferred Tucson, AZ Mortgage lender.
Think of me as your Tucson mortgage expert.
Call me if I can help you with a mortgage to buy your next house: (520) 349-9090
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TUCSON REALTORS: You can hire me to take your First Impression Photos. (same phone number)
