Morning Glory

I painted this illustration in oil back in 1989, for a book by the same title by author LaVerle Spencer. Quite a good book, actually, which they later made into a movie. I recently gave the original painting to my 80 year old parents and noticed the toolbox, saw, etc wasn't in the image! I remembered that the art director or editor at Ballantine books must have felt it cluttered things up too much! Oh well it's still there, it's under the grass I had to paint over it. There's a definite inspiration from Norman Rockwell in this one, I don't mind admitting. I didn't like adding the morning glories climbing up the right side of the image,it didn't look believable, but they wanted them to be visible at the edge of the front cover. They call that a " step-back " cover.
I brought my shaker rocker into the photo studio and had one of the most used Romance models of the time, P.J., now married with kids, bring her boys in to be in the shoot. Simon Rogers, British model, still in the biz, played the part of the out of work drifter in this depression-era story. At this time, we were shooting black and white film, so all skin tones and other colors were made up. I found an old, decrepit house on Mountain road, Dutchess County, NY, which became the inspiration for this house.