Shadows

I once lived in an old country house—large and beautiful, very solidly built in plantation-style at the turn of the twentieth century by an ex-confederate colonel who emigrated north.  Money was not apparently an issue back then, from the finest oak to a gleaming white marble fireplace and carved and stain-glass windows on the first floor.  Originally it had a spacious veranda that circumferenced the entire structure, and a balcony on the second floor.  The rooms on the first floors were sizable and, typically for the time, had high ceilings—not the most comfortable design to mitigate the winter blasts of arctic air, nor the summer heat.  At least the views from every side revealed the greater expanse of open woodland and grassland, not to mention a distant, winding river once explored by Lewis and Clark.

A long-standing rumor among the locals had it that the old colonel’s reputedly extensive gun collection had been buried somewhere on the property.  But the only things found were hundreds of arrowheads.  Years later an historian told me the site served as a temporary encampment for the Teton Sioux bands under Crazy Horse and Red Cloud, in the wake of their defeat in the aftermath of the Battle of Little Bighorn...

The multi-roomed basement I used as my atelier.  There I did a significant part of my body of paintings, including the one below, painted wholly with a palette knife, entitled “Shadows.”