My Favorite Painting Spot
It wasn't long after moving to Georgia in 1982 before I found the one spot that inspired me to paint the Vanishing Rural Georgia scene. Just north of Madison, near the town of Bostwick Georgia stood an old abandoned plantation complete with a plantation mansion, overseer's house, barns and sharecroppers shacks. The main house was slowly being repainted after decades of neglect and most of the out buildings were disintegrating.
I drew a pencil of the overseers house which was never photographed and long since sold.
Then I painted the "Window on Georgia" piece showing the beginning of the repainting process while showing the sharecropper sheds in the front and reflecting an old house in the back. I followed this painting by "Out Behind the House" of an old tool shed that was in back of the main mansion.
The tool shed collapsed a couple of years after my painting was completed in 1984 leaving only the roof on the ground for a couple of years before that too disappeared. One by one the out buildings disintegrated while the main mansion, now repainted, started falling apart too. A large branch fell through the roof around 1990 and rain poured in for many months before the roof was repaired. Windows have been broken and although the building has been used in the movie "The Oldest
Living Confederate Widow Tells All" and in several commercials as well as in the short lived television series "Vanished", no one has restored the building to livable status and soon I believe, it will also collapse.I've painted and drew the sharecroppers' shacks on a few occasions and one painting, "Gone But Not Forgotten" won a best in show award in 2007.
All-in-all, the Nolan Corners area has been good for my artistic temperament and helped me create some of my most memorable works. I hope that the vanishing rural scene in Georgia doesn't vanish too quickly. I believe that I still have a few paintings left to do of this fascinating theme. And I'm still looking for that one scene that will make the ultimate statement on the rural farmhouse of the past.
3 comments:
Even though I am looking at these images on my computer screen, still, I can FEEL the leftover feelings of lives lived in these places. That isn't because of your photos Pete. It is because of the way you have been able to imbue them with that life, that spirit, that dignity and nostalgia.
Wow. Excellent.
Lynne
I am in awe. Looking at these paintings, I can almost hear the echoes of voices of inhabitants long gone who called these dwellings "home." Thank you, Pete, for preserving these images of rural living with your brush strokes before they are forever lost.
Phillis
I wish I had just a little bit of your talent. I wonder what these places looked like when they were fresh, new and still occupied.
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