Wierd Return Generosity Continues

So tonight I write a thank you card to the person who decided to put those cd's out with a 'please take' sign. I walk over there thinking it is the least I could do considering I listened to them for half night and they are some of the best classical music recording I have ever owned. So there I am using strapping tape to secure the card up high enough on the tree so to be out of dog pee zone. I had scrawled in big Bubble Sharpie letters "TO THE PERSON WHO LEFT THE CD'S HERE." Well that should do I thought as the neighborhood watch called the police. I decide to walk back on a street that I have never walked down. That was kind of an odd decision to make but I thought yeah, six blocks South sounds good. Along the way I decide four blocks South should be the route.

Sure enough Curbside garbage heaven awaits me as I stand speechless in front of a large apartment building and a black garbage bag mountain that is as tall as me. Now this amount of waste is always troubling, but it was what was next to the wooden bar stool that stood on top of the heap that caught my eye. A framed painting in murky palette thrown atop the bags in king of the mountain style. I lift it up noting that is was roughly the size I paint 24x30. It was a still life of an indiscernible object, possibly a semi open paper bag of walnuts. I flipped it over to decide that it was on linen and when examining it under the street lamp it was clearly a vintage oil, thinly painted with a couple of small flakes that have come off and some spiderweb cracking. The wooden stretcher bars were a heavier wood than what is used now, It just sort of screamed student art. I brushed off dust bunnies that were older than me and dusted it as I walked. When I got it home, I realized that the only weird thing was that it appeared that there was a signature that had been painted over at a later time with a different hand and a thicker texture. As I tilted it in the light it was really evident that there was something covered by the zigzag brush stroke. It is the kind of painting that grows on you with time and distance. It is the kind of painting that is quite powerful from ten feet away. I really could not put a date on it, but the pallete choice makes it seem like 40's or 50's. The stretcher bars are helpful, but I still cannot tell. Hmmmm, well regardless, when I got it home it looks like it belongs in my room. It fits the vintage style of the building so much that it looks like it was painted in this building. I would not be at all suprized if it was. Nothing seems accidental anymore to me. I just have to keep going with it and see where it takes me next.