Late Fall At Brookshire Mill

Giclee Print on Mounted Canvas
Edition of 300 S/N
Image: 20″ x 24″
$300

This is another view of one of my favorite places when I lived in the North Carolina Mountains, in Boone. I spent a lot of my time sketching and poking around this wonderful old mill, which has been long gone since the mid 1970’s. A brief history of the mill can be found in the “giclee” section of this website at “The Mill on Brookshire Road.”

Originally called the Norris Mill, sitting next to Howard’s Creek, most people called it the mill on Brookshire Road, or simply the Brookshire Mill. Over the years I had painted this mill in all seasons and from numerous vantage points. This is my newest painting of the mill, done from my extensive photo file and some old sketches. My favorite time to go out there was in the winter, when there was snow on the roof and the mill pond was frozen, but late fall was also a great time for photo and sketching excursions. The air is crisp and dry and the sky is the clearest blue, and you can surely pluck an apple from one of the old trees along the creek road, but you always know that winter is just around the corner.

I haven’t been on Brookshire Road in at least 20 years, and I would be willing to bet that the road is paved, the apple trees are long gone, and there are expensive homes along Howards Creek now, with cars in the driveways probably bearing Florida license plates. That’s progress, I suppose, but I’d rather remember my old pick-up truck, that bumpy dirt road and that gorgeous old mill around the last bend.