Bon Dia, it’s Lawtell your art guide, back again. Miss me? I hope so!
This oil painting takes you to the neighborhood of Otrobanda, in Williamstad, Curaçao. To get there you just walk from Punda across the foot bridge over the ship channel. As I may have told you, my human artist lived on that island before I was born. They say that Otrobanda no longer looks like this, with flashy clothes for sale from Venezuela. The colors and shapes are mesmerizing, such delightful objects. And the little shoes! Apparently they’re called kitten heels, perhaps to acknowledge that I myself appreciate them. They make a lively sound that alerts me when my human walks to the center of the universe, the Kitchen. She may be making my after breakfast snack! Ooops, I’m getting distracted from describing the painting; thinking of food distracts me. And I always think of food.
Nowadays Otrobanda has high end tourist shops and less character than it used to. So, if you want a lovely piece of nostalgia for the Caribbean that used to be, this is your painting. When my humans had an exhibition of their paintings at the Curaçao Museum, the Amigoe newspaper’s critic wrote “het geeft een mooi detail uit een stadsgezicht weer” about this painting. For those of us who don’t understand Dutch (and even I don’t understand Dutch) that means “shows a beautiful detail from a cityscape.”
If you roll over the image of the painting (or touch/click if you're on your phone), you can see me in my flashiest fedora looking sharp. Makes me feel like a feline Jean Paul Belmondo, or maybe George Clooney. You can guess by my fragrant carnation that I await a certain senorita… Oh la la! I’m ready to “dal un keiru” as they say in Curaçao. That means cruisin’ around with no particular place to go, as Chuck Berry might sing.
Sincerely meow,
Lawtell the Art Cat
lawtellartcat@gmail.com
previous painting page: Selene forward to next painting: Fats Domino's Blue Heaven