The Art of Mildred Fox Arnold

For two weeks in the late summers of the 1950s Mildred experienced a rare opportunity to concentrate on painting during family vacations in rental cabins in Eldora. It was a quiet former silver mining town in the Colorado Rockies whose summer residents fondly referred to as Happy Valley. Mildred packed an assortment of turpentine, linseed oil, brushes, palette knife, pencils, pads, canvas and tubes of colors from Burnt Umber to Payne’s Gray in a steamer trunk alongside the boys’ fishing rods, tackle boxes, cowboy hats and hiking boots. The family of five shipped the trunk Railway Express to Colorado’s Moffat Tunnel and drove their 1948 Ford sedan from St. Louis to Boulder, stopping to visit with Sibell—who had married a professor of English, Francis Wolle—and then to collect their trunk at Moffat Tunnel.