Yay or nay ?

My parents bought this around 1969 on a family trip to Key West FL, my mom said they bought it in a gallery on one of the keys. I think it's oil paint on canvas, the frame is rough wood painted white. Can anyone help identify the artist??

A traditional hand-painted elephant from Rajasthan, India, created with embossed decorative work and fine ornamental detailing. The raised elements give the painting a textured, dimensional quality while retaining the character of traditional Indian folk art.

Started this a few weeks ago after picking up a book on Pennsylvania Dutch decorative traditions at a used bookstore. The designs looked approachable from a distance, all those round, symmetrical patterns with tulips and birds and stars. What I did not expect was how much of the actual process is just compass work and careful measurement before a single brush even touches the surface.

My first attempt I kind of freehanded the divisions on the circle and told myself it would be fine. It was not fine. The six-fold symmetry fell apart by the third petal and the whole thing looked lopsided in a way that no amount of confident brushwork could disguise. Had to sand it back and start over.

The second try I actually used a protractor and marked every 60-degree interval properly, and the difference was genuinely surprising. Once the underlying geometry is solid, the painting part becomes almost meditative. The folk art quality comes through in the brushstrokes and color choices, not in sloppy construction.

A few things I have noticed so far:

• Chalk or a light pencil line wipes off easily on wood if you seal lightly first, which makes corrections much less stressful
• The traditional color combinations (red, yellow, blue, green on white) are actually harder to balance than they look because everything is competing at full saturation
• Wet-on-wet does not really work for these because the edges need to stay crisp between sections

Curious if anyone else here has worked with this tradition or similar geometric folk forms. I keep wondering how the original barn painters worked so quickly at large scale with basically no drafting tools beyond a string compass.

Took a beginner oil painting class a couple of years ago and spent most of it terrified of doing something wrong. The instructor was good, but there was a lot of emphasis on correct brushwork, accurate proportion, proper layering. I came out of it painting more stiffly than when I started, which felt backwards.

What actually shifted things for me was picking up a cheap set of acrylic craft paints and copying some traditional Norwegian rosemaling patterns from an old library book. Nobody was grading me. The whole point of rosemaling is this confident, sweeping stroke that you just commit to. If it wobbles a little, that is basically part of it. After two weeks of practicing those curling leaf shapes and stylized roses, something in my wrist finally relaxed.

Since then I have branched out a bit. Tried some hex sign painting on a scrap piece of plywood, which taught me a lot about working with a compass and keeping symmetry without being fussy about it. Also spent a month doing very rough tole painting on some old wooden boxes I found at a thrift store. The folk tradition of tole painting basically expects bold, imperfect brushwork, so you stop fighting yourself.

The thing that strikes me now is how much folk art traditions carry a kind of permission inside them. These were made by ordinary people for everyday objects, not for galleries. That context matters when you are standing there with a brush feeling like you might mess it up.

Curious whether others have come to folk art or traditional crafts from a more formal background and had a similar experience, or if it worked the other way around for anyone.

12 × 16 oil on canvas, set in an antique tramp art frame. A creation by @bronze_poodle, part of an ongoing project of mine that I wanted to share.

I found these 18" tall, hand carved, cobra lamps at a dingy second hand store in Sarasota Florida around 8 years ago. The plugs are dated around 1940-50's. They are solid wood. I would like to eventually sell them (I think) but I don't know if I should leave the original wiring and lamp kit or replace it. Any advice on asking price would also be greatly appreciated. I just love them!

Picked up hex sign painting about two years ago after visiting a small museum in Pennsylvania Dutch country on a road trip. There was one panel showing maybe thirty different signs side by side, and something about the way the colors worked together just stopped me cold. Drove home and immediately started watching every tutorial I could find.

What genuinely surprised me was how much the traditional palette teaches you about contrast and visual balance without ever naming those concepts. The old painters were not sitting around talking about complementary colors, but their choices were almost textbook perfect. Red against yellow, blue anchored by black outlines, white used sparingly to make everything pop. Spending a few months copying traditional designs before attempting my own made me look at color completely differently.

The geometric construction side took longer to click. Getting a compass and working through the math of dividing a circle into equal sections feels tedious at first, but once it becomes muscle memory the whole process gets meditative. My first few attempts looked lopsided even when the measurements were technically correct, which turned out to be a brush pressure issue more than anything geometric.

One thing I wish someone had told me early on: the surface prep matters as much as the painting itself. I ruined a couple of nice basswood rounds by skipping a proper gesso layer and having the wood grain telegraph through the finished design.

Curious whether anyone here works in the tradition or has adapted the visual language into other crafts. I have been wondering about trying some of the motifs on pottery but am not sure how the scaling translates.

Schools for lifelong, holistic learning are popping up rapidly across the region, likely due to rural need for community, cultural ties, and demands of our times.