My Painted Stairs

I started to paint while the kids were at sleep-away camp.

I am an enormous admirer of Vanessa Bell’s country house, Charleston. She was the writer Virginia Woolf’s sister, of course, and she painted the walls and doorways of her home with her lifelong friend Duncan Grant. Gosh, I always thought, I’d like to be that uninhibited, that free. Then, as I approached the age of fifty, I thought, to hell with this, it’s now or never. I’m just going to start! So I started. And I painted these stairs that lead upstairs from my narrow 1911 home’s first floor. When I climb these stairs, I’m made happy. I am happy. I have a charmed life.

Here’s a larger view. I stenciled the checkerboard part, and painted the rest freehand with Benjamin Moore sample jars.

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