La Belle Epoch Painting

HOW IT ALL STARTED My parents took me to London and Paris when I was 15, in 1975. In Paris’ Montmartre district, we watched a man in a wheelchair paint a 16x20 water scene in oil, with a pallet knife. My dad bought the painting for $55. When we came home, I bought the supplies and tried to duplicate the painting and did a pretty good job. From then until about 1985 I painted 15 or so paintings and gave most of them away, but still have a few of them hanging in my home. Life gets busy and you just don't have time to paint. I always said that I would start painting again when I retired. COVID2020 After the first three weeks of lockdown working from home, the honey-do list that I'd been building for 22 years was finished and I was bored. As luck would have it, my eldest son gave me some stretched canvas' last Christmas and I got my 35 year old box of paints out from under the garage tool bench. The paints that I last used in about 1985 were all still good. So, I started painting. I'm loving it! In August of 2020, my oldest nephew called to tell me that he only had a few months to live due to cancer. This is also the most time that my wife and I have spent together since I was unemployed in 1999 and as it turns out, we still like each other 😊 I had been working as a Supply Chain Director for a manufacturing company in total, I had been working since I was 12 (48 years). Coupled with my renewed love of painting, I moved up my retirement by 3 years to July 2021 because life is short. Enjoy!