Waiting for the Thaw

"Passing Don's Old Place at First Light - Study"

oil painting - © Bruce A. Morrison

(click on image for a larger view) 

 

What does a person do around NW Iowa with 2-3 foot drifts still in the garden and throughout the back yard and pasture?  Work inside the studio!  And what kind of work seems best for this cold old duffer while waiting for the thaw?  Summer landscapes! 

 

This is a gravel road about 4 miles south of us as the crow flies...you'd have to be a crow to get there in just 4 miles because the road passing our place stops - hits a "T" intersection 3 miles south of us.  Evidently the valley and creek bottoms there dissuaded road construction straight through back then.

This is actually a small oil painting "study".  I have an idea for a much more elongated painting in the future of this same location but wanted to do a smaller work-up of it to judge just how I'd approach the palette for this piece, and to just see if it might be worthy of a try.

This depicts an old farmstead and home of a gentleman I never met...he was using the small home off behind the trees on the left for a summer residence while, as I understood it, living with a daughter during the winter months.  His family also had a farm and home place a mile north, of which the house no longer stands.  Don passed away 3-4 years back and the small house now belongs to someone else.  

 

The trees along the road create a nice "tunnel-effect" and one morning last summer I was heading out to another location when I passed through and thought it would make for a nice painting "some day"!  Now I need to find the time to do it!  (The bigger version that is.)

Meanwhile I'm still in the studio - picking up things I meant to be getting to for what seems like a long time...and waiting for the thaw!