Galvanized

2017

36" X 24"

Oil on Panel

SOLD

The complete backstory for the Kuerner Farm Series can be read on my blog post for July, 18, 2017 …

which you can search for by clicking here

My first thought was to head in to the barn.
The metal bucket still leans on the iron pipes in the spring room in the middle of what is the ground floor.
I had seen it there before, and wanted to start there. Negotiating the dirt and hay strewn floor,
I followed a few other artists into the maw of a cave that darkens by degrees as you walk deeper into the lowest level of the barn.
The tiny room had a small light on inside, and a photographer. He had already set up a tripod and begun to work.
He and that tripod were shoehorned in there and fixing to linger. So, I moved on.

I spent the next couple of hours just orienting my senses and studying the space and the light.
My only goal was to listen. To be open to the muses.
I kept my pencils and my camera quiet,
and walked through the house, sat on the front porch,
watched the two little goats playing behind the wired fencing,
strolled up past the barn to the old carriage shed,
watched as a red tailed hawk soared over the upper fields,
and then I went back into that barn.

The space was empty, of humans, and, as I peeked around the door frame, I heard those pesky muses laughing.
What had been a dull dusty space, was now alive with color from a high raking light.
The old panes of window glass dividers had an eerie teal tint that glanced across the water,
spilled down to the edge of the concrete basin and bloomed into a rainbow
as it spilled in divided rivulets over and onto the cracked drain in the floor.

The sunlight somehow was angling back in through the opened barn doors
and lit up what was left of the chipping red paint on each of the dutch stall doors.
And, there was some kind of magical metal dance playing across the bucket.
I was in.

Now I mentioned the closeness of the interior there, right.
So, I was extremely cautious about my footing,
and the proximity to an oil tank and some other machinery and bottles and the odd sharp metal bits.
When my eyes had adjusted, and my camera shutter finger allowed that that light just might hang out a bit longer,
I gingerly took a step to the right and looked back toward the doorway and saw that mirror.
And the raincoat.
And that was sorta fun.

It wasn’t until I got home,
and let all that dust settle,
that I saw the rough pencil lines
of the math equation
where Karl must have been keeping track of his herd
someday very very long ago.