In order to obtain information necessary for the making of this picture I went, quite naturally, to Washington. The White House is off limits, but I saw it from the usual distant vantage points. There's not much doubt that the south facade of the building presents the most appealing view. The rounded portico is a strong feature, and it makes up for the otherwise poor quality of the building's architectural details. Although I'm not qualified to discuss these matters authoritatively, I'm of the opinion that the mouldings are too thin. They don't project enough to create the shadows that are needed to define the shape of the building. The capitals are really bad. The dentils are tiny; they should stand out much more. And since the building is painted in a blinding white, all the shadows wash out anyway. And so forth. When the building was designed the United States had no professional architects, and the task of creating a Palladian villa was a bit beyond us. The alterations that have taken place over the years have not helped very much: the balcony inserted by Harry Truman into the portico, all the stuff on the roof. If someone wanted to tear the place down and start over again I would not object.

In view of the building's defects I found it necessary by way of compensation to spend a lot of time drawing and painting the park that graciously surrounds the building. I really struggled with that because I'm not a landscape artist; most of my work has to do with figures. I felt (after much experimentation) that a very painterly approach is necessary to render grass and foliage. In order to create that effect I had to create "brushes" in Photoshop, which allowed me to imitate to some extent the texture of impasto paint.

My beloved computer (G4 Macintosh with 8.6 OS) allowed me to experiment with a great variety of color and lighting effects: I tested literally hundreds of possibilities. I'm not a colorist, but I certainly produced a better looking picture than my unaided faculties would allow. The computer is, in my view, a huge gift to the artist.

I needed a good photo of the building, an item that proved very hard to find. In recent times the White House has been shrouded by foliage: possibly for security reasons. By a lucky accident I noticed during a visit to the Heurich mansion (where the Washington Historical Association is housed) a picture of the White House that was taken in the 1840's by a photographer named Plumbe. It is probably the first picture ever taken of the building. It was perfect for my purpose. It shows the building from precisely the best viewpoint, and the details are all very clearly displayed. (It's ironic that of the millions of photos takens since, this one is the best.) The photo, which belongs to the Library of Congress provided a sort of skeletal image that needed to be reconfigured and changed in many respects; but as a start it was ideal.

I also had to figure out how to draw the people in the foreground. I decided early on to show the annual Easter Egg Roll "event", because it was an occasion that would be well documented with photos. The management of The Washington Post gave me the rare privilege of visiting their picture collection, where I was able to find excellent material. The Library of Congress also has a collection of nice photos that are available online. The Easter Egg thing was started in Benjamin Harrison's time, and it was photographed pretty regularly ever since. It's an obvious subject: Women, Children, the White House, and Easter. All neatly scheduled, ready for the photographer. How perfectly delightful it all is to be sure. Well, ok, maybe too delightful. I'd have preferred a picture showing the White House in the Andrew Jackson period, when unruly crowds overran the building. But there was no photo documentation for that. At the Post, however, I discovered excellent pictures taken in the 1930's. People dressed very neatly and formally back then. They really tried to meet the expectations of what was still an aristocratic social setup. And Eleanor Roosevelt was there, on the scene, getting tons of good publicity. The WP also had lots of photos from the Eisenhower era, but in those pics the people somehow looked sloppy and they flopped around the lawn as if they were on the beach. My picture is an idealization: it shows the building and the setting in a way that never was. In the great divide between realist and classical artists I side with the classical. In that respect I am at one with the architects who created the Landmarks: the classical forms are derived from nature, but they are moulded by the idealizing mind of the artist.