Another interpretation of the Haw River storm

I've been stuck again. Nothing works. So I went back to the series on the Haw River storm and made a smaller piece. I like this one. I think the use of dry brush helped define the clouds better than I've achieved before.

Haw River Storm #3. Acrylics on matboard. 13.5" x 10.5"

What life was like

Virtually all of you my age have a personal connection to the tragic loss of a child, whether the child of friends, family or your own. I am a lucky parent but too many friends have lost a child in childbirth or to illness, accident or other tragedy. Each loss has filled me with grief and I can only imagine how parents and siblings must feel.

I thought of this yesterday as I was driving around taking some landscape photos. I stopped at a church on Sax-Beth Church Road just inside the Alamance line in Orange County where Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina are located. I walked over to the old cemetery and began looking at the tombstones.

There is a large family plot for the Pickard family, I suspect the prominent family that owned the land surrounding beautiful Pickard Mountain.


Within the plot, side by side, lay three marble slabs.

The first one reads:

The second reads:

The third:


Three children, all born a decade apart and none lived more than a year. Sigh.

It's complete

Down below in a post titled "I've started a new piece" there is a photo taken through the famous window at the top of the stairs. The painting based on the photo is finished now and will be making its way to Louisiana as a Mother's Day present.

It was fun to make and turned out reasonably well. The photo is, as usual, not very good; the bricks are much too red, the blue isn't dark enough and its crooked and poorly cropped but it's the best I could do. I'll try for a few more shots tomorrow before I go to UPS and see if I can do better.

It's a big piece 48" x 60" or so on one of the 2" deep canvases.

Haw River Night. Mixed medium, acrylics and collage on canvas. 48" x 60"

The storm redux

A second take on the storm.



Haw River Storm #2. Acrylic on canvas, 36 x 24 (I think)








Okay, so here is the picture on which the canvas is based. The black part is the wall surrounding the "window" at the top of the stairs. It is really red brick but with the lighting it shows up as black.