Morning Sun

Another fan sent me some pictures recently and a good story to go with them.

... my wife and I purchased what we thought was a folk art painting from an antique store (somewhere on the San Francisco peninsula, I seem to recall). One house move later and the painting got stacked behind some other picture frames. I just ran across it today and noticed it was signed. I decided to Google the artist's name. Back of the painting also has a printed form that reads:

RUTH DICKER

“Morning Sun”, 19?? (date is not legible)

12”x12”

hand print/mixed media

Here are the pictures:

A very nice piece. A hand print means Dicker constructed the three dimensional trees and then before or after painting them, she printed the designs onto other pieces of wood or paper. This particular design actually looked pretty familiar to me, so I went digging into my photos. Here are The Walnut Tree #3 and The Walnut Tree #4 from 1992:

There is a chance that Morning Sun and The Walnut Tree #3 are actually the same painting, or they are just very similar prints. I think I have even seen more versions of this particular painting, but I will have to search around for them. The torn label on Morning Sun is also likely read 1992.