Portrait of Julia Glidden

This was the first of a series that I was to continue on for the next ten years, being a concentration on portraiture. My first subject here was a girl that I had been fascinated by. She was Scottish, and had moved to the States. For a while she had lived in the same small town that I had been in, hence my acquaintance with her, but she had moved away. It was entirely by accident that I ran into her a year later than that in New Orleans, LA, where I walked into a gallery that she was working in.

This is only a small painting, and involved collage. Her face is actually charcoal on gray paper, fixed to the canvas. Her hand and leg are also collaged, cut out of magazines. Obviously I wasn't too concerned about realistic proportion. The setting is in New Orleans.

A strange fate awaited this painting, as I was conned out of it. Years later when I was showing in a barroom this painting turned up missing and evidence led me to believe that the bar manager had sold it for an income and then acted like he didn't know what had become of it. I did successfully sue the business, and got something out of it, but I'd still like to know whatever became of the thing, just out of curiosity

 

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