Take A Trip Without Leaving The Farm

Inspiration comes from the doggondest of places, don't it?  Some may search high and low for that perfect face to paint, or travel around the globe looking for awe inspiring vistas to immortalize on canvas. 

Me? 

I stumble out of bed...

I didn't set out to do this on purpose, but I just realized that I've spent the past two years painting scenes from around my home and studio here in Pittston, Maine.  It's not much of a property, just four acres bordered by a little creek named the Eastern River.  It bends like a horse-shoe and our property is the inside part of the shoe.  Our home is a simple Cape Cod style home built in 1830, and sits on top of a ridge.  The open land around it slopes down to the river.  Simple.  But for some reason, it has provided me with scenes that I felt compelled to paint.  Let me give you a tour of what I'm talking about.

At the edge of the river is an old pump house that looks like a dog house with a nice cement foundation.  It once was used when the drinking water for the house came from the river.  This was the first thing I painted after we moved here.

I painted it in Winter:

And in the Summer:

Speaking of the river, I have depicted it in Spring:

And late on January afternoon:

It does have a tendency to flood in the early Spring, so I painted that:

There's a big old maple tree in my back yard.  This is my portrait of it from the living room window in Winter:

The shade of the tree stretches across our root cellar door in early Spring:

We have a porch that wraps around the front and side of the house.  This is it, looking out from the inside of the house:

And now we're looking up at the house from my studio, showing the back of my garage (because there's just not enough paintings of garages in the world) and the porch on a lovely Summer day:

And this would be the front of the house in Autumn:

I also had a good time drawing this with white pencil on black paper:

I haven't forgotten the interior.  This is my piano in the living room:

And why wouldn't I want to paint our dressers in the bedroom?

Turning around from the viewpoint I used in Mirror, Mirror, this is the top of the stairs as late day sun shines up the stairway: 

Quite a bit of inspiration, not to mention inventory!  Like I said, I didn't set out to do a series, it just happened.  Be forewarned, though: I'm sure there will be more to come.  Because after all,  that's what I do:

I work at home!


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