Portraits: Alice Neel in Bennington, VT, 8/10/14

Tonight I'm in North Platte, Nebraska. After a strange time in Indiana, when I couldn't find the place I'd reserved through Booking.com and found an angel instead, who saved me from a place I learned that a TripAdviser reviewer had said not even to go into the parking lot.

Goldie is going to have a radio talk show in Fort Wayne. She wants me to write her biography...stories everywhere

I know that my Art Works have been cooking in the back of my mind throughout this whole trip, but today, when I left my last familiar stop and headed into the last week of my journey, I really see the portraits blossoming. 

Annie let me know that there was an Alice Neel show going on in Bennington, pairing her paintings with an itinerant portrait painter of a century earlier. Even though I have seen photos of these paintings before, it's a special treat to examine the brush strokes up close, see how much of the canvas is bare, study the outlines....

This one was sliced up by a jealous lover and then put back together

I'm on the home stretch of my journey now...Tuesday evening now, I'll be home Sunday. Get back to painting....Excitement!