“Off to the Oyster Beds,” a painting found at a garage sale, led the buyer, Davis Dutton, on a several-year search for the painter, Jessey Dorr, and for information on why she ended her promising painting career early. Photo courtesy of the Davis Dutton Collection
Six years ago on a warm, fall Saturday afternoon, my wife, Judy, and I were heading back to our bookstore in the San Fernando Valley. We had just wasted half the day at a disappointing book sale in West Los Angeles. The prices had been high, the merchandise mediocre — lots of book club fiction, an abundance of out-of-date textbooks and not much else. So when we saw the garage sale sign on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks, we weren’t terribly optimistic. It was after 3 o’clock, and by now the books would have been picked over. Nevertheless, we decided to give it a try.
We followed the arrows to an attractive English-style house, just off Valley Vista Boulevard. As we’d predicted, the garage was practically empty, just a few paperbacks and some tools that hadn’t sold.
And then we saw the painting.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/11/06/PKGG0FGTMM1.DTL#ixzz1YXcqNfl4
Great story! I absolutely loved it! November 06, 2005|By Davis Dutton
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