Prop Room

2006

20" X 34"

Oil on Panel

In the Artist's Collection

On my birthday in 2001 I drove down to Chards Ford. and toured NC Wyeth’s studio for the first time.
Twenty years after graduating as an art major I had decided to return to the easel
and was getting ready for my first solo show and went back to the well for inspiration.

In high school my magnificent art teacher Jim Gainor would throw the class on a bus
and drop us off at the corner in Chadds Ford with paint box
and watercolor paper taped to a board and we’d be on our own for the day.

I can remember trudging across Wyeth’s farm to get water out of the Brandywine river
and then sitting on a hillside painting the spring house by the road.

Quite a different place now.
Six lane highway and the old mill is now the Brandywine River Museum.
But some change is good.
Now, instead of sneaking around you can pay a couple bucks
and get to spend some guarded time inside of the family home, the Keurner farm and NC’s studio.

My first trip there had a profound impact on my life as an artist.
Unlike Andy’s choice to break free from the oils his father used with gusto
and walk down the dry and dusty less traveled road of egg tempera
I was reversing the trend and eschewing his elegant but rigid medium
for the bold viscous color of oil.

Sitting in NC’s studio on a long wooden bench I tuned out the tour guide and drew it all in.
The smell of the huge fireplace, light filtering in through the two story paned window
the palette left as it was the day he met up with the train
the paint spattered wide planked floor
the scaffolding in the mural room
the hat on the drum at his desk
the bottles and brushes
and the prop room.

I was in awe. A whole room devoted to storing his props.
It alone was the size of my entire studio.
Muskets and wagon wheels and saddles and hats
and you could just hear the salty sailors and adventurers whom he painted carousing in the darkened corners.

Five years later and I am on the threshold, literally, of having my own prop room.
After some much needed renovations,
the bungalow next door is going to become my studio
and the little room on stilts where I and my easel and all of my props
and the good dog Gulliver
have been tucked into the corner
will be dedicated as The Prop Room.

     And so, having come all the way round that circle
you might be able to imagine how great a gift it was
to have the privilege to tag along with Alison Shaw
when she spent an entire morning last week on a private photo shoot in NC’s studio.

The ropes were taken down.
The room was silent except for whispered conversations with our guard
and the long pauses between clicks of her camera’s shutter
as it tried to make up for the heavily clouded day on the other side of that great window.

With hands in my pockets I explored every single inch.
Circles within circles, I am beholden to you all.