Tangerine Dream

by David R. Darrow 5" x 7" (12.7cm x 17.78cm)
Oil on Canvas Panel SOLD Collection of Matt and Annie Beghtel
Portland, OR – USA

About This Painting

When I was a teenager, my parents took the family to Solvang, CA—a beautiful little Danish town near Santa Barbara. In a gift shop there—maybe several around town — were very small paintings of fruit: cherries, oranges, apples, grapes... and sometimes little still lifes of a book and a candle, etc. They were always set in dark backgrounds, painted on panels, not canvas, and had the look of being fairly quickly done, as though this artist instinctively — or likely through much practice and observation — knew just what to put down on the panel to give a high degree of realism to a scene with minimal strokes.

I was mesmerized by these little paintings, and my parents should have known at that moment that I would be an artist for life, the way I held and studied these little paintings signed by an artist who only used the three letters 'LAK.'

They always had realistic, reflected light, and crystal-clear water drops in them. I studied them until I knew how to paint a water drop in color. I suppose I owe a great degree of my artistic future to this unknown artist LAK, for showing this 14-year-old kid that it could be done. I am also in debt to my parents for taking me to those shops, since they instinctively knew how to feed my soul.

About 34 years ago I sold my very first commissioned work of fine art. The painting was of a single orange in front of a dark, gradated background — I stole the idea from LAK. it was an 8" x 10", acrylic on canvas panel. I don't remember titling it, but I'd likely have called it something like "Orange."

Brilliant, I know.

I recently heard it is still in the collection of Barry Rapozo, the gentleman who worked with my father, and who asked me to paint him an orange. He insisted on paying me upon completion — I was delighted and excited to be told, at 14, that someone would pay for something I was going to paint, since I was regularly making paintings and giving them away because I just loved to paint.

I received $30 for it—and felt overpaid.

I think I signed it "Dave."

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