Reaching back in time to my childhood, old weathered farmhouses and outbuildings appear on my canvases and panels as I bring them to life again. A modern police station has replaced one fond memory, while a strip mall another. The child in me recalls the rusted farm equipment I played on visiting my aunts and uncles farms. Winter evenings kicking up fresh snow tracking animals from building to building. A fox, maybe looking for a sleeping hen, or a rabbit looking for a warm place to spend the night. The warm light calling to my frozen toes from my aunt's kitchen.
I could see my grand mother sitting at the kitchen table working on one of her thousand-piece puzzles. Grandma liked working on puzzles and my aunt let her keep one under the table cloth in her kitchen. At grandma's house there were several completed puzzles under her own table cloth.
On my canvas a farmhouse, in direr need of paint, begins to take shape as more childhood memories push their way forward in my head. I remember stacking firewood in the summer for warming feet in the winter. My dad appears on the porch with an old blanket, he and my uncle head for my uncle's Ford to tinker a bit on the transmission. Granddad will advise from the porch. I get orders to move fresh firewood to the porch for drying. The rabbit dashes to a new hiding place as I load my arms up with the wood. Each brush stroke brings a new memory, and memories hold my interest in the painting. Most paintings I do are ways of reliving fond moments in my life, keeping me upbeat.
