"Route 41 Suite"

"Outcast" 30 x 24 pencil

It was a common setting in the rural south during the 50's and 60's when I was growing up as a young man, the small tobacco farms in southeast North Carolina. Looking back I have realized how much the people and life on rural family farms influenced my art. The curiosity and attention to detail in the rugged and worn hands of a field worker, to the faceted, weathered, and bleached boards on the side of a pack house. The juxtaposition of the natural surroundings, to the plowed furrows in the land before planting.

I have been designing and adding to a body of work called the "Route 41 Suite" for many years. I am sure that this effort will never be complete. It may end up being abandoned at the right time, like when an artist knows that a painting is finished. Where ever I live or travel, I seem to see something in my surroundings that reflect those early childhood influences.

Two drawings have been my newest additions to the suite: "Outcast", a weathered facade of a 200 year old pack house used to store cured tobacco. An old rusted, useless lantern hangs casting its shadow that covers and envelops every crack and crevice of each board it follows. Subtle as it may be, one can observe through the cracks, and see a distant landscape.


"A-Maize-D" 30 x 24 pencil

"A-Maize-D", is a random scattering of newly harvested ears of corn. The abstract play of texture and color values bring back memories of my chores, like shucking corn to feed the chickens, hogs, and mules. Though the subjects seem mundane these days, they represent volumes of wonderful memories of my childhood.