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Dalee is subtitled "A Painting for Maria" in my mind. The first time I attempted an oil painting from life,
I used raw umber and white and tried to create a hand and profile of a model named Herman. I had never attended
life drawing with this particular group of artists before, so there were many new faces. During one of the breaks, a very
talented portrait artist, Maria, came up to me and started sharing that my painting would look good in oranges. Now,
I gotta be honest, here. I wasn't used to other people actually telling me what to do with my painting.
In art school, I was always told, "Don't compare your work to other people's work. Create your own voice and don't use your mental energy worrying if you're better than your neighbor." So this kind of freaked me out and I wasn't sure how to respond. Plus, I thought, I hate orange. I'm a magenta person. The more she went on, the more I decided that I wasn't going to color Herman at all. (I'm pretty predicably the non-conformist.) I never have.
However, when the model Dalee started to pose, and I saw her orangey features, well, . . . I thought I'd do a painting for Maria. And every time I look at this painting, I smile, and ponder on how much we really do influence each other.
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![[Dalee]](http://www.borsheimarts.com/painting/1996/dalee.jpg)
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