Eufaula City Hall – 8″ x 10″ Watercolor and Ink

“Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.”
–Charles Dickens

Great advice!!

Copyright Beth Parker Art 2012

Eufaula City Hall – 8″ x 10″ Watercolor and Ink

It’s amazing what I learn when I paint these buildings.  This one was pure joy.  Although I initially dreaded doing all those rocks, it ended up being my favorite part. 

Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, the son of John and Elizabeth Dickens. John Dickens was a clerk in the Naval Pay Office. He had a poor head for finances, and in 1824 found himself imprisoned for debt. His wife and children, with the exception of Charles, who was put to work at Warren’s Blacking Factory, joined him in the Marshalsea Prison. When the family finances were put at least partly to rights and his father was released, the twelve-year-old Dickens, already scarred psychologically by the experience, was further wounded by his mother’s insistence that he continue to work at the factory. His father, however, rescued him from that fate, and between 1824 and 1827 Dickens was a day pupil at a school in London. At fifteen, he found employment as an office boy at an attorney’s, while he studied shorthand at night. His brief stint at the Blacking Factory haunted him all of his life — he spoke of it only to his wife and to his closest friend, John Forster — but the dark secret became a source both of creative energy and of the preoccupation with the themes of alienation and betrayal which would emerge, most notably, in David Copperfield and in Great Expectations.  More…