2023-12 Oil on Panel Guilford, CT

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On this evening the landowner welcomed me on to her property and encouraged me to come back any time. We agreed it was a very special place. I was in a rush to paint as the storm was already supposed to be dumping buckets on me and I had gotten a late start. Had spent too much time searching for a subject. Ended up out on the road and not in the field. Was drawn to the light at the top of hill where the road bends and starts downhill. Painted like mad trying to beat the rain. Also it was windy, cold and very raw. Fingers hardly moving. Midway along, a perfectly normal-seeming man in a big white truck slowed down. I expected a friendly greeting which is often the case. Instead, he let loose an angry and frightening verbal assualt, objecting to my painting (pulled to the side on a public road). He yelled that I ought to have gotten permission from the landowner on the other side of the street, in whose direction I was looking, then sped off. Remarkable. A first. Didn’t slow me down much. But I was glad not to see him heading back my way. This might somewhat explain the moody feeling of this piece. As I continued to work I was wrestling with my own personal collection of happy and unhappy life experiences and surprisingly awful moments, but also, in all of them, there is light and hope.