Memory Lane

Hi Everyone!

Wow! Check it out!  I made my post on time this week.  Progress!

This week has involved Miss L. heading off to school.  So far, so good.  She likes her homeroom teacher, is making friends and is complaining about having to get up so early in the morning.  Typical first week of school in my experience.

I am up to my eyeballs in estate stuff.  As in, there is STUFF in our barn, under the tobacco barn overhang, in the bedrooms and in the vehicles waiting for it all to be sorted and sent to wherever it needs to go.  I am not a STUFF person and this is making me crazy.  I keep telling myself “this too shall pass”.

Other than the few minutes I take here and there to knit a few rows on my second pair of socks and the beginning stages of a logo design I am doing for my daughter’s blog, there isn’t a creative thing going on right now and it is depressing.  I get cranky when I don’t have a drawing or painting or SOMETHING going.  I’m not seeing much hope of starting anything soon either.

In all the cleaning out of storage units recently, my sister-in-law handed me this.

I had not thought about this book in decades, but it brought on a flood of memories and the realization that it influenced my artwork in ways that I did not know.  Jericho was published in 1974 and I was twelve years old.  The artwork is by Hubert Shuptrine and poetry by James Dickey.  To be honest, I never read the poetry until now, but I remember being absolutely mesmerized by the paintings and drawings.  The funny thing is, I had no idea in my memory where I saw this book to begin with.  Now I know that it resided on display in the foyer of my husband’s grandparents lovely old house.  Evidently, I saw it there because I can’t imagine where else I would have seen it at that point in life.  Strange how life circles back sometimes.

Hubert Shuptrine’s paintings and drawings amazed me with their detail, emotion and moody atmosphere in the same way that Andrew Wyeth’s work would a few years later.  I am still drawn into both artist’s work now just as I was then and find myself all these years later starting to do drawings and paintings in the same vein after decades of avoiding rural settings.  Strange how life circles back time and time again.

Wishing you a peaceful week and lovely memories.  Send prayers, supplies and donations to our friends in Texas.  They need them all.