Saturday Is For Art

Today, from The Envelope Collection: Top to Bottom

1. Level Playing Field Out The Window

2. Uncle Fred's Oil & Gas Station

3. Popular Messiah

4. Level Playing Field No. 5

5. Black Flag

All five of these paintings were done on the back of a 9"x12" black envelope. When I was working, I received hundreds of monthly reports about the status of investment portfolios. One company located in New York City sent me their reports in these black envelopes. I liked the texture of their envelopes and started to save them. Because the envelopes were black, I covered the back of the envelopes with white acrylic paint so I could draw on them with a ballpoint pen. The first few pictures I did in ballpoint and one I sent to the company in NYC where it is framed and hangs. Back when I worked in the trust departments with several banks, I would take 9"x12" envelopes, that I had received research reports, into investment meetings to draw on. Some of these investment meetings would last more than an hour, and after one hour of listening to people talk , my brain would switch to screen saver unless I started to draw. Sometimes , I went into these meetings with my pencil moving and I did not stop drawing until the meeting was over. Originally, I worked mostly with bonds. At one trust department, I was the only person working with bonds, so my fixed income meetings were short. I did however enjoy listening to the discussions about the equity market, and at times, I even added my 2 cents. Trying to explain, in those days, how the Fed operated and how monetary policy influenced the stock market, the bond market and inflation was not easy. I tired to explain it, but not everyone was ready to hear it. Well, that is how I got started working with paper envelopes. Later, I started painting on the black envelopes and that is how The Envelope Collection came about.