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Life Before TV


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For many years I have been collecting paper ephemera and children's puzzles from flea markets and antique stores. I am attracted to imagery from the forties and fifties, the period of my own childhood. Now as an adult, I am always amazed by the innocence and naiveté of these images of children, so different from the graphics used now or the ways we perceive children today. The lives of American children as seen in coloring books, rainy day activity books and puzzles from this era appear simple and wholesome. Children are often shown engaged in outdoor play such as flying kites, carrying sand pails or throwing balls. Before TV, the Internet, Game Boy and Nintendo existed, board games, books with mazes, puzzles and images to color kept kids busy when they couldn't go outside.

In this series I select parts of old activity or coloring books and put them in a new and unexpected context. Other paintings refer to a childhood — my own — without coloring books, paint by numbers and TV. I was encouraged to draw and paint free hand and grew up with radio as the only media. My imagination was cultivated not only by illustrated children's books but also by trips to art museums.

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