New Website

"Paan Raja"
10" x 8", Oil on Canvas


I have been in Maryland for over a week now, working on cleaning out my Mom's house and readying it for sale. So what to do with any downtime???

First of all, I crushed my primary hand, my painting hand, in the car door, resulting in a trip to the emergency room. No breaks, thank heavens, but my poor hand that serves me so well, is bruised and still swollen and sore.

I remembered that I promised myself I would work on building a new website. The template one offered by Fine Art Studio Online. There's a learning curve, and things to work out, but I have been working a little for the past two nights, and making progress on that, but not ready to unveil it just yet, especially since I don't have access to all of my photos.

But I did have this photo above of a paan stall in Kumbakonam, India. I loved the colors of this scene, and the sign above that shielded the man from the sun. I tried to copy the Tamil writing at first (I started at the left of the writing), but I quickly ran out of room.

There are lots of paan sellers in India. Paan is sort of a "hand-built chewing tobacco", which starts with a betel leaf. Various things, like tobacco, spices, and gosh knows what else, are placed in the middle of the leaf, and rolled or folded up into a packet. Sometimes you might get a paan at the end of a meal. You pop it into your mouth, and chew away, and like with chewing tobacco, you spit. But the leaves are a gorgeous color green, and are fanned out in piles for sale, and it's always a treat to see the paan seller, even if you don't chew.