Under the Paint: The Trader Joe's Painting

This is a picture of a building with a tree in front of it.

We've all seen this painting and wondered how a painting can say so much with so few words.   This is the painting that caused Earth's art world to reassess and rethink its values, to take a good, hard look at itself, an honest look at all that it holds valuable and sacred.  And after the art world looked at itself, it went about its business unchanged mostly except for a small group of artists who thought it was neat to focus on that which they were numb to because they saw it all the f#cking time.

And there's a back story to this painting that goes like this.

Paulette went out and set up in the planter of the middle school across the street from her subject because she didn't want to be on the sidewalk where all the foot traffic was.  It was kind of cold, maybe 60 or 50 degrees Fahrenheit with 10 to 15 mph winds coming from the northwest.

She was short with a nice woman who asked, "Is this part of a series about College Avenue?"  To which Paulette responded, "No."  One guy asked to see it and then kind of stood in front of the painting to do so and Paulette kind of had to reach in front of him a little to paint it, but he was nice and said, "Sorry for the interruption."  A four foot high kid asked to see it and saw it and then said, "You got good skills."

Other than these interactions, nothing too exciting happened except for people honking at each other in righteous indignation.