# 105 - The Adventure Continues, continued yet again

 As I promised, I'm back to talk about my paintings one more time, for the time being. 

For me, this painting - "School Morning" - is important. It's important not for anything I've done, but because what it shows and what actually happened, and I assume is actually happening today. A determined mother on 15th Street just south of Christian Street in Philadelphia is taking her children to school in the morning. I didn't talk with her, but I'm assuming that she realizes the importance of education in our society, and her children are going to start getting their education no matter what. The style I used is a little more careful than a lot of my work. even though the people are relatively small in the painting, I wanted the viewer to see the expressions on their faces, especially the determination in the mother's expression. But as I filled in the background around the mother and her children, adding things like the traffic lights and the forms of the shadows in front of them, I loosened up my style, so that the figures would remain the most important elements. I hope the painting has an impact on you when and if you're able to see it. 

"Crossing Spring Garden" is just that; a mother and her son are crossing Spring Garden Street in Philadelphia around 9th Street in the morning as they begin their day. She has to pull on him a bit because it's early in the morning and he's not totally awake. We can see the remnants of the elevated Reading Railroad line and the towers in Center City in the distance. I consider this a pleasant painting, with the sun shining, most of the trees still carrying their green leaves, and the mother young and attractive. But you'll notice that I still want to catch her gesture accurately because for me, catching gestures accurately is a good part of my pleasure in painting people. 

"View from the EL" is interesting for me for several reasons. What we see in the painting is the view of businesses and the street of Allegheny in Philadelphia from the El platform. One thing is that I painted this with a palette knife, something that I use more often for landscapes in Normandy, France. However, using a palette knife gives a special quality to the surface of a painting. I've seen some painters use a palette knife while trying to show the details of a painting completed with a brush, and failing. Usually, this strategy usually fails. The different tools produce a different result. In this case, with "View from the EL," I believe i succeeded. I didn't show the details of objects in the painting, but I gave an impression of them, also because you can mix colors right on the canvas with a palette knife. And a person in the painting can be added with just a dab of paint with the tip of the knife. And the painting is interesting for me because I used bright colors and distributed them to keep the viewer's eye inside the canvas. 

That's it for now. If you have any questions, just email me at billkosman@gmail.com

If you read all of these explanations, I admire you and appreciate your interest. 

Best, 

Bill