Views of 18th Street

 Our block is the upper end of W 18th St which terminates at Mount Salem Lane. This has given it a bit of an enclosed enclave vibe, where for a time the kids owned the street. And as we've been seeing, several accomplished professional artists have been part of this little community. I have taken this block as a subject for art itself in watercolors, acrylics, Christmas cards, and crafts.

Here is a watercolor view of the north side of the block that I painted for a Christmas card.

 The houses and the walking couple were painted separately, then scanned and combined digitally. This allowed me to experiment with placement of the figures and alternative foreground subjects like sledders.

The Christmas card prompted  Joe Harris, who with his family lived across the street, to suggest that I paint a winter view of their side.  This view is in acrylic on canvasboard.

 The most prominent house here is the Harris's, and the car belongs to Tom Harris.  Years earlier I painted a watercolor of the Harris's house with an earlier car belonging to Tom.  The view is from my bedroom window.

In the 1970s, inspired by the arcade of trees leading to the site of the Swedes landing on the Christina River at Wilmington's Fort Christina Park,  I planted three curbside sweet gum trees. Later a neighbor across the street planted two of his own.  The trees now tower over the houses, providing a beautiful multicolored fall leaf display.  The price we pay is a rain of sweet gum seed balls along with the inevitable leaf debris.  Here's an acrylic painting of 18th St neighbors in fall clean-up, while a City leaf-vac comes around the corner.

For neighbor friends in facing house farther down our block I made as gifts  wooden shelf-sitter versions of their houses from scans of small watercolor paintings.

The largest painting I have ever done is also 18th St. It's a mural that is 18 x 15 feet.  Our next-door neighbors needed to cement parge their side of an irregularly shaped  section of stone wall separating our yards, but were unhappy with the dominating cement face.  I  painted a mural on the wall with a view down 18th St starting from their house.

Mount Salem Lane around the corner and its view of Mount Salem Church has inspire paintings as well, as have adjacent Rockford Park and Rockford Tower.  Perhaps we'll visit these later.