Marshfield Barn

Giclee Print on Mounted Canvas
Edition of 300 S/N
Image: 28″ x 20″
$300

Before I even realized that I would live my life as   an artist, old barns were a source of fascination for me.  One of my favorite things to do was (and still is) climbing around in old and often   abandoned barns.  When I started teaching myself to paint in the early 1970’s most of my subject matter was old farms, and usually the barns.  I saw myself then as a sort of historian, in a mad rush to paint those great places before they were torn down to make way for golf   courses, shopping malls and condo projects. Now, living on the coast,  there are few great old barns to paint.  But occasionally, traveling   through the mountains of western Carolina where I once lived I will look  at a shopping mall or golf course and remember the great barn that was  once there, and I wonder if someone still has my painting of it.  I hope so, anyway.

Maybe it is that old Yankee pride, but in New  England they don’t seem to tear down barns to make room for strip malls;  barns still seem to be part of the fabric of life there.  You can drive       just about any back road in New England and still find some of the most  beautiful barns ever built.  My wife, Deb, and I did just that a couple of  years ago and it seemed like there were great old red barns around almost  every bend in the road.  The one pictured here is a huge barn, dating back  to 1883, and part of a tidy and well-loved working farm in the Marshfield  community, west of Montpelier.  It was late Fall and you could just feel  Winter coming. The last leaves and a few gnarled apples were clinging to  the trees and you knew that in a few weeks it would all be covered with  snow.  I wanted to capture that feeling, those last warm days and the  coming wind.  I shot several rolls of film, made some sketches and  couldn’t wait to get back to my studio to paint it.