If you read my first blog post, you know my paintings came out of a hard place. I had a need to escape, and painting allowed me to do that in my own home. But my paintings also came out of a beautiful place; to me, perhaps the most beautiful place on earth.
In 2018 we bought Sunrise Farm, a 10-acre historic farm outside of Coopersburg, PA. Once much larger, it’s now surrounded by upscale single family homes built in the 1990s. But when the trees are covered in leaves, I feel like we are alone in the country.
I quickly learned why it was called Sunrise Farm. And as an early riser, I found lots of reasons to carry my iPhone and take photos. The one acre pond behind the house served as a reflecting pool. I saw every sunrise x2.
I’d be eating breakfast and suddenly out of the corner of my eye, I’d see pink or orange or lavender in the sky and I’d run outside with my iPhone to preserve the moment. I learned how fleeting the colors In the morning sky are….if I hesitated, it was gone.
After a while, I installed real chickens in the barn (not the magic kind). On my way to feed them and let them out, I’d be awestruck by the view when I rounded the corner of the house. The sky was full of light and color, like a show just for me. I’d stand in the driveway with my mouth hanging open.
Sometimes my children would be getting ready for school, and they’d yell out, “Mom, look! Look at the sky! You’ll want to take a picture.“ Sometimes they took pictures of their own. (At this moment, all three aspire to careers built in some way on creativity and the arts, and that makes me very happy.)
Eventually I started seeing other beauty….light through the trees, my fluffy-butt chickens in front of the barn, fall color, pond reflections. And that’s when the two things came together: my need to create, to express myself….and the beauty of Sunrise Farm. My early paintings were almost entirely from photos I took at the farm.
Now, I paint other places too. But it started here. And it mostly still comes from here. Here is where I dwell. It’s a part of me.
Note: Someday soon my website will also have a photo gallery, and a photo page in the store.