Farmscapes
My grandfather bought a farm outside of Arlington, Tennessee, in the 1960's, and it was a favorite weekend getaway for my family. Some of my earliest drawings are of this place, and I keep returning to it with my paints year after year and season after season. Recently, I've also been painting on a farm in North Carolina I am lucky enough to stay occasionally.
These landscapes are especially relevant today with the endless sprawling of suburbia. Many people who grew up in this region have said longingly to me that my work reminds them of their families’ farms, many of which are now hermetically sealed by asphalt and buried under the latest ring road or shopping center. The scenes I paint are a celebration of parkland already set aside for public use or a documentation of our precious greenbelt that is too rapidly being devoured by sprawl. All of my paintings contain an implicit call not only to revel in the landscape around us but to preserve it as well.
Click on an image to see it larger.
These landscapes are especially relevant today with the endless sprawling of suburbia. Many people who grew up in this region have said longingly to me that my work reminds them of their families’ farms, many of which are now hermetically sealed by asphalt and buried under the latest ring road or shopping center. The scenes I paint are a celebration of parkland already set aside for public use or a documentation of our precious greenbelt that is too rapidly being devoured by sprawl. All of my paintings contain an implicit call not only to revel in the landscape around us but to preserve it as well.
Click on an image to see it larger.
All images © Martha Kelly -- All Rights Reserved