Modeling Fall Fashions, Declassified
2005
20 by 11 inches
Digital Painting
Based on a photo from the “Hanford Historical Photo Declassification Project”.

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Ah, now some are nightmares to paint and some are not so much and some not at all. This was a tough one.

I wanted things to appear not quite right so the Japanese woman’s shadow isn’t incuded and her kimono drapes a little off for the chair.

The colors may seem odd, having the sweater the model wears and the jacket she holds the same color as the wall, but I chose to do this as she has such great aspirations to be a mannequin. Peculiarly, in the original photo, though her left arm does not appear to be supported by anything, she seems to be wearing some sort of metal device on her left hand, concealed by the jacket, which aids in holding her hand in the desired pose. Her hand has no tension in it, imitating a muscleless mannequin.

There are at least two more photos of this woman that I've found in the Hanford Declassified Project archive. In one she displays a rack of incoming fashions on a large shop floor, so this may have been a shoot for the Richland Bon Marche.

I have no idea what flowering plant is supposed to be depicted in the curtain, and not knowing I made the flower a gray-white.

The skirt the model is wearing appears to have had two large pocket panels forming the front.

A standing card on the table read, “Back to Campus, in a nylon sweater blouse.”

As usual, working on something like this, I have quite a long time to meditate on the individual, wondering about them, their life. What was this woman’s aspirations? Why was she in the Hanford area? Was she a model or was she an employee at the store? If we visited her three decades later, what would we find her doing? Did her life turn out any way at all as she hoped it would?

Did she find love, happiness and adventure as Leslie Caron in "A Secretary in Paris"?