My Fall White Barn and Pond really shine in two treasuries on Etsy by Art Walk Etsy Team Members. I'm very grateful that they found it beautiful. The painting is based on a little farm I have frequently passed over the years when traveling to visit my family in The north Shenandoah Valley.
The beautiful horse barns at Ashby farm located between Markam and Deleplane in Fauquier County, Virginia have always fascinated me. They are tucked in next to a small mountain with traditional working horse barns that are easily seen from interstate 55.
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| Asby Farm today as a Winery |
I suppose in my mind I have reveled at the beauty of this farm ad thought to myself what a beautiful place to have horses and grow food. The house is more like those traditional houses that started out as a log cabin but as time when on substantial add-ons let to a more elegant sprawling home. Not a plantation house but something more worthy of a successful working farm with flowering fruit trees that bordered its drive to the main house. They are so beautiful in spring white the rest of the property is spattered with dog wood, redbud and variations of lime and yellow-greens of the newly budded trees and undergrowth. Gosh I sound like a real-estate sales person. But alas its only the esthetic beauty of the place that drives my fascination to photograph it and paint it in one of my “photography drive by shootings”.
What exactly is a Photographic drive by shooting? Well it involves a camera, a car, vigilance and a certain amount of discretion, because you don’t want to invade privacy. The pint of a photographic drive by shooting is to capture a vignette that can later be used in a painting especially when you really don’t know the people or even how to contact them, yet that beautiful section of dramatic and peaceful scenery is really an important part of your life. A place like this becomes a part of your life because everyday you travel by it for years at a time either as a commuter or on your frequent travel home trips when you work in one locations but have family some miles away in another location.
You sorrow when its seems less prosperous. You revel in renovations and successes and imagine what the exterior only hints at. And even though you know you probably won’t eventually have some intimate knowledge of what is inside, the possibility always exists that you will.
Bozena is an extremely creative Fabric Artist From Poland. She says, that when she saw my painting with the beautiful reflective pond, that it inspired her to put together this wonderful collection by Etsy Artisans of autumn greens.
She did a wonderful job. Y
ou can see details of her collection here: http://www.etsy.com/treasury/MTIxNDEzNTd8ODc5MjM0NTI4/autumn?index=0 This particular farm has been a part of my life for over 30 years. I have seen it through its active days as a breeding and training horse farm, its days of dereliction as the economy turned against large working farms, its subsequent listing and sale and its current make over as a fast growing stop on the Virginia Vineyard trail. This infant winery is Ashby House Farm Vineyard?? Ok it has Ashby in its name some where.. because, well, the Civil War Hero Col. John Ashby really got around. And I think this might have either been a “where he slept “ sort of thing or he and his family actually owned it at some point.
Truth is its historic mystic is not nearly as important to me as my own experience day dreaming about its aesthetic potentials. =0)
