I love old wooden barns. Slumped ridges, tilted doors, and abandoned
stalls all speak of by-gone times.
No matter how much I look at square and level pole
buildings, they don't excite me. Old barns have character, belong to
landscapes and make fascinating drawing and painting subjects.
I paint barns as I would portraits, trying to capture how they were
built and weathered. For the most part barns look to me like old
people, forgotten, not used much. Their boards are split or missing.
Weeds grow around them. Pigeons roost in their lofts. They represent
our human presence on the land, places where we labored and built
lives.
There's an old barn on the farm where I live. Its boards were cut
from nearby trees and its corrugated roof is rusting. Cows last used
it forty years ago. They rubbed board edges round in the stalls where
they fed. I paint it and other barns around the area to preserve
remnants of the past and because barns are simply interesting
buildings that tell stories.
