Woman With Dress Trapped In Car Door

Here is a painting showing a woman with her dress trapped in the door of her car. It’s something that I saw one day and I wrote it in my diary. I often walk Alfie down to the local park (the squirrels are tame and often descend tree trunks upside down and wait for biscuits to be passed to them.) One day, as I exited the side gate and strolled onto Lakes Road – a quiet road of houses looked on by a modern apartment block. As I walked passed a house a woman in her forties called out, “Excuse me!” I saw a head above a car.

“Can you....er....come round here a minute please?” she said quizzically. Blimey – was she one of those bored housewives you read about in in the porn magazines that tempt dopey clueless wimps into their houses to maul their mambas.

“I was hoping you’d be a woman,” she said, “But I’m sure you’ll do.”

Was she going to say she had a nasty leak in her bedroom and could I go upstairs and block the hole? I’m afraid not. When I walked round to the back of the car I could see she’d got her dress stuck in one of the back doors. She had put a baby chair on the back seat, closed the door and had someone locked the baby inside. The bottom quarter of her floaty dress remained in the car door. She asked me if I’d mind going into her kitchen to fetch a spare key.

I got the key from a hook in the kitchen (and took £60 out of a biscuit tin for my troubles) and released the lady. She said she’d been trapped for a few minutes and had been shouting for her elderly neighbour but without success. In desperation she said she’d considered the option of unzipping her dress and stepping out of it however there was an apartment block opposite the house and didn’t like the thought someone was watching her.

I have done a painting to mark this scene. It wasn’t easy to draw out and I had to do it from memory. How do you go about selecting a car, which way the woman will be facing, her facial expression? I just got on with it and tried to keep a sense of proportion. The car looks like an old Ford Escort doesn’t it? I find painting faces difficult so I had the lady facing away. In the background I just dabbed in a few fields and trees. It went quite well in that and there was no wreck to save (sometimes I scrape off an hour’s work and redo it.) I’m not sure if anyone would want this painting – perhaps the lady in the painting would? It could be on her wall this time next week – or yours – for £48,856

Sam is equally impressed…

Getting the sky done…

Coming together…

Mmm….I’ve seen worse (such as my other paintings)…