Grain Hopper

2001

15" X 20"

Oil on Panel

SOLD

This painting is about coming full circle.

Over 25 years ago my parents bought an historic grist mill and opened a custom frame shop. As a college student I helped out and learned the trade during vacations. My final thesis as an art major was a series of pencil sketches of this building. The bricks and the beams and the gears and the legend of storing cannonballs there in the civil war were great mysteries to me.
Out of school and in Boston it was the framing reference on my resume which lead me to my first job. After managing the custom frame shop at the Harvard Coop for most of the 80’s, and soaking up all that Harvard Square had to offer, it was time to make a move toward my lifelong goal of being an artist.
Now, a decade and a half later, I am realizing that dream. The shop has changed hands several times. I have changed careers several times. But the mill still stands. There are still traces of grain in this hopper and the earthy remnants of gnawed wood and oak flooring worn over the centuries.
It seemed fitting to mark this new chapter in my life by revisiting this imagery. From pencil to oil and black and white to color it echoes the transformations in my work and life.
And, long after the dust has cleared from this, my first show, and the paintings have all come down and the conversations have sailed away on the early fall breeze…this quiet corner of wood and brick will be here.
Looking out its window at another century passing.