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“But no matter, the road is life,” Jack Kerouac wrote in On the Road.
Taking the classic Beat novel to heart, in 1991 Dori and Joseph DeCamillis, two young, newly married Boulder painters looking for artistic inspiration and a way to avoid a mounting pile of debt, bought a 1970 Ultra Van vintage motor home for $4,000 and hit the pavement.
“Fortunately, we are artists with overactive imaginations. Ordinary humans would never have glanced at this pile of rotting metal,” writes Dori in The Freeway, her self-published travelogue, which chronicles their adventures and sells for $15. “But somehow, through it all, we pictured a shiny, pure white 1950s style motor home with a red tire mounted in front and shimmering hubcaps.”
Christening the van “Lucy,” the couple began crisscrossing the country, selling their paintings at outdoor art festivals.
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“We’ve discovered a new calling in life,” Dori writes. “The mere mention of peddling my superior wares at a tasteless, middle class, vulgar outdoor festival would have been unthinkable a year ago. What a difference a year of eating carrots and living in the Hood can make. Now I don’t care if I sell paintings at Elmer’s Used Furniture Emporium.”
And they did find their niche: classic American roadscapes. The DeCamillises now specialize in painting road scenes, including the freeways, billboards, fast-food restaurants and phone lines that Americans drive past every day while commuting to work, running errands or taking vacations.
“Outdoor festival-goers spend a lot of time on the freeways,” says Joe. “But it was a really wonderful way to see the country; we learned so much. We’ve probably broken down in every state in America — sometimes multiple breakdowns in one state.”
And because motor homes are not exactly spacious, the DeCamillises shrunk the size of their paintings to compensate for their lack of space. “We started working in all different sizes, but since we were living in the motor home, it just made sense to go smaller and smaller,” remembers Joe. Now all of their oil paintings are done in miniature, ranging from one to seven inches in width.
“The response that we got to the smaller paintings was way beyond anything that we’d ever seen before,” says Dori. “We really get into the narrative going on in each piece.” The paintings range in price from $255 to $1,100.
But how do they paint complete roadscapes on a canvas so small? “We use size zero brushes — really tiny,” says Joe. “Sometimes I pluck mine to make them even smaller.”
“Someday we’ll probably have to use magnifying glasses,” adds Dori, laughing. “But not yet.”
The DeCamillises will peddle their wares at this weekend’s Cherry Creek Arts Festival, which is one of their favorites, probably because they sold over twenty paintings there last year. “That is a crazy amount for oil painters,” says Dori. Local scenes for sale include a rendering of the Kmart on Arapahoe Road in Greenwood Village and a view of I-70 with the Denver suburbs in the distance. “Colorado people really love their landscapes. They’re very proud of their state.”
When Dori gave birth to their daughter in 1995, the couple retired Lucy and settled down in Birmingham, Alabama. They continue to hit a number of art shows each summer, traveling now in a family-friendly minivan. “We still have the Ultra Van, of course. It’s sitting right out front in our yard,” says Dori. “It’s very visually wonderful, and it brings back a lot of great memories.”
