Last weekend, in the 95+ degree heat, we checked out Orange County's latest park. Due to the generosity of the two last Blackwood sisters (Mary and Nannie), and after years of dialogue and debate with the county, we now have another beauty spot near Hillsborough. The Blackwood Farm has been preserved for hiking, events, and history. The place has a peaceful spirit over it, and a breeze under the huge sugar maples surrounding the old house, which lured us into sitting at a picnic table for almost half an hour, watching towering clouds form above the tree line across the rolling fields.
All my life, since I was a small child, I have wanted to be able to take in a place, a feeling, an event, and have them emerge from me in colors on paper or canvas. These last few weeks it has begun to happen. We came home from Blackwood Farm and I stood in our garage, sweating profusely as the late afternoon sun flooded in the open door, and drew this in about an hour and a half. It just poured out of me onto the page. It's incorrect in all sorts of ways, if you compared it to the real place, but it's Blackwood Farm. I showed Laura what I was doing and she exclaimed, "That's where we just were!" and I pointed out the wrong placement of pond and buildings and she also agreed that somehow this was more true than a literal image could have been.
I have several more pastels that have been completed lately, and I skipped them to show you this one. I'll show the others soon.
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