This morning I started to watch the old 1953 movie “So Big” that I had recorded the other day from TCM. I enjoy watching those old black and white films, and while knew I had seen this one before, I didn’t remember its storyline.
The movie begins with a young lady (Jane Wyman) attending a posh boarding school in the 1890’s. When her father suddenly died leaving her with nothing, she was forced to leave school and take a job teaching school in a in a tiny farming community outside Chicago.
She knew nothing about agriculture and while traveling in an open wagon to the farm home where she would be housed while she taught, she asked the farm hand that was driving the wagon, what she was seeing in the field. He replied, “Cabbages” to which she replied, “They are beautiful.”
Saying “Cabbages are beautiful.” was a great joke to the farm hand, and her statement spread through the community as a joke, and was referenced several times in the film. Her statement also resinated with me when I heard it, because I too, think that cabbages are beautiful. A cabbage happened to be the subject of the first painting I did, back in 2005.
I had taken photos throughout my life but it wasn’t until I retired that I realized that every time I took a photo, in the back of my mind I was thinking, “This would make a good painting.” Upon my retiring, I realized I was getting old and if didn’t start painting, I never would. I chose a photograph I had taken of a red cabbage in my garden to be the subject of my first painting.
Fortunately, that painting of a cabbage turned out really well and that encouraged me to keep painting. Had it not turned out well, I probably would never have painted another picture. Above is my painting of a “beautiful” cabbage.
You can view my other paintings at: davidmarchant2.ca
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