Old School House

Old School House
Oil  18" x 24"
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This is the 8th (of 9, although there will be 2 more later) of my recent Grasslands series.  This old school house appeared to be sitting in the middle of nowhere.  I should re-do that sentence:  This old school house was sitting in the middle of nowhere.  Actually, it is the community center for the town of Stoneham, which I mentioned in the last post about the book & the restaurant.  Anyway, Stoneham is out in the middle of nowhere.  There are about 4 buildings left from the "old days" as well as a very large, still in use granary.  I'm not sure who uses this community center, but it's there!

Every where that we stopped on this trip my husband would warn me to look out for snakes.  I don't know if you've ever seen a woman tip-toeing around photoing in the grasslands, but if you have, it was me!  The woman from the restaurant (again, last post) warned us to be on the look out for rattle snakes.  My husband was right!  She said that she had recently run over one in her plow when she was out moving the fields.

A repeat from the past posts about this series:

A short while ago I received a phone call from a student at UNC, Greeley, Mina Jackson.  She is a freshman journalism major and wanted to interview about my paintings in the Grasslands Show.  Here is a link to the article she wrote:  Grasslands Article  I was so impressed with her preparation, she had 15 questions all ready to ask.  I think the article is well written for a first year student.  Thank you Mina!

I recently participated in the "Grasslands Inspiration IV Show" in the Mari Michener Gallery at the University of Northern Colorado, Greeley, my alma mater.  The paintings for the show were to be of the 7 "grassland counties" in northeastern Colorado.  It had been years since I'd been to that part of Colorado.  So, my husband, always supportive of any thing art related that I want to do, and I spent two days driving around the back roads in that area taking 100s of photos and getting inspired by the grasslands.  Both of us had a great time and couldn't get over all of the different "grasses" and their many, varied colors!

Upon returning home I spent hours editing the photos, then sketching my favorite locations.  I did several dozen sketches before starting the paintings.  Originally I had planned on doing very large paintings, but due to time, most of the paintings were 12" x 12".  I ended up loving that size and painting 9 12 x12s as well as 2 larger paintings of the grasslands!  I was motivated by a new inspiration!

For the next 2 weeks I'll be posting grassland paintings.  Enjoy!