The house on the hill
Acrylic on canvas
8 x 8 inches
Barbara Muir © 2013
When you love a place the way we love Nova Scotia,and travel there by car -- certain landmarks
help you know you've arrived. This house is one of
them for me. You see it coming along Highway
6, the Sunrise Trail, from Amherst. It's at the top
of a hill, and it appears over the brilliant green of
summer grass.
This year I photographed it frantically as we drove
by, and then when I was painting it the angle was
different than my mind's image, so I wasn't clear
that it was "the house." Driving by another day,
I thought, "that's the house in my painting, oh and
the house on the hill," and the house was all the
more real to me because I'd been staring at it,
deciphering its appeal.
This is it. A simple white farmhouse. Those
white buildings set against vivid green grass,
and blue, or scowling grey skies might as well be
the fans waving flags at the finish line of a race at the
end of our 2,000 kilometer (1,242 mile) journey.
They say, "lucky you. You're here in Nova Scotia
again."
I think I'm finished this painting. It was just
missing the tree. Light influences everything we
paint. In our part of Nova Scotia the sand is a
coppery red. The colour changes wildly with the
time of day, and many of the roads and paths
are the same colour. That was my ground and
it wants to pop through here and there, so I let
it.
Have a finishing-your-happy-work day.
2 comments:
houses can be beacons and landmarks and when they fit the topography as they do in Nova Scotia, they become the landscape. Sweet that you imagine it calling out to you! If houses could talk:)
Hi Sally,
There are some places along the way that you can rely on as beacons. This farmhouse, then a red barn and farm, with the ocean finally peeping through, then our friend Ken's garden center, and whoop, you're around the curve and into Pugwash, see the Chatterbox Café and we're home at our other home.
XOXO Barbara
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