Linda's Farmyard Memories

I want to be in this scene.

It's easy for me to imagine sitting on the back porch swing... watching the chickens peck around... feeling the breeze,.. noticing the windmill turning faster... wondering whether that thunderhead will bring rain or just move along.

It feels like a back-home memory ought to feel.

What a pleasure it was to get to paint this one.

My blog friend Wendy of  Pieceful Thoughts posted a photo of one of my paintings alongside one of her beautiful quilts.  From that, her blog friend (and my new blog friend) Linda of Texas Quilt Gal contacted me about doing a painting for her.

It took me about zero seconds to fall in love with the story her image was telling me.

Before beginning, I asked Linda many questions. Her answers would give me a feel for what was important in this photo and what would be important for her to see in the painting.

Here are a few snips of some of her answers:

... photo taken in the late 1950s, showing the view the windmill..., the chicken house (there are chickens at the bottom of the photo), and the old barn... taken from the back of the house...

... thunderheads were my favorite subject with my Brownie camera... still one of my favorite subjects...

... the coop, the chickens, the tree, the clothes line, the windmill, and yes, the thunderheads - all...  meaningful and part of the picture in my head. 

The chickens were dear to me but they weren’t very smart, and Mom and I almost always had to shoo them into shelter before a storm or they’d just get soaked.

Yes to the blue sky AND the billowing storm clouds, if possible....  white billowing clouds but darker underneath, the thunderheads that develop quickly in Oklahoma...

Haha on the chickens - yes most were white, but my big Plymouth Rock rooster (Rooney) was my pet who actually followed me around. We had a couple of Rhode Island Reds and what Mom and Granny called a "black banty hen"...

I hope I captured most of the important parts of the scene.  If you look closely even Rooney the Plymouth Rock rooster, a Rhode Island Red chicken, a little black Bantam hen, and a few white chickens made it onto the canvas! (Linda's not the only one who has an infatuation with chickens! 😉)

Enjoy a little 40 second video of the process. (And, yes. I did totally screw up the tree and have to wipe it out and try again.)

Thanks to Linda for trusting me to put her memories on canvas.

Thanks to this 40 year old book with a pretty great cloud painting lesson.

Original Oil Painting on 12"x 16" Wrapped Canvas
[SOLD]