Painting is hard - particularly at the end of the process. Two steps forward, nine steps back. A great deal more time staring at the easel than actively painting.
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Creatively, I've been mulling over patterns. Literal and physical patterns in our environment. How single motifs or behaviors add up in meaningful ways over the course of a lifetime of a person or a landscape or a community. How we repeat societal patterns over and over until they become calcified habits, no matter the damage.
And how change happens in spite of all that.
(You know. Breezy stuff.)
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I give you my final painting of and about the Water Valley community. The large brick building houses the B.T.C. and the tiny white awning is the Violet Valley bookstore.
This piece is emblematic of how the community has continued to evolve over the decades, or at least according to the stories that I've heard.
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This past summer, I had a show at the E.E. Bass Cultural Arts Center, home of the Greenville Arts Council. As I was prepping for the exhibition, it occurred to me that I didn’t have any pieces of the Mississippi River itself.
Which is embarrassing and shameful, for the following reasons: 1) I’ve lived within 150 miles of this behemoth for 40 of my 45 years on the planet, and 2) the Mississippi River makes Greenville, Greenville.
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When I sent an informal survey asking people about third places, one of the responses was the Greenville Cypress Preserve, a 16-acre ecosystem right in town that has a couple miles of public walking trails.
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If you’ve ever spent time in the Mississippi Delta, you likely noticed, among other things, the presence of tamales on nearly every menu and tamale stands in most towns. Sometimes literally driving down the highway.
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I garden because my mother gardens.
My mother gardens because her father gardened, and his people gardened, and their people gardened.
We come from a long line of east Mississippi dirt farmers.
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I made a short video about the creation of Ingrained Care, a painting inspired a conversation I had in 2019 with Drick Rodgers and Julia Rodgers Clark in Rolling Fork, Mississippi. Watch the painting unfold and read the community story that inspired it.
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I made a short video about the early stages of Cultivation, a painting that’s based on a conversation I had in 2019 with Benjamin Saulsberry, Public Engagement and Museum Education Director of the Emmett Till Interpretive Center in Sumner, Mississippi.
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The Oskaloosa Public Library was built in 1903 with support from a grant from the Andrew Carnegie Foundation and leadership from the Oskaloosa Women’s Club. Beyond books, the Oskaloosa Public Library provides cultural programming, language classes, reading programs, music events, a seed library, a makerspace, a library of things, and a genealogy room.
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In 2011, Oskaloosa’s Skate and Bike Park broke ground. This urban park sits north of Penn Central Mall and downtown Oskaloosa and was funded by grants from the Tony Hawk Foundation, the MCRF, local donations, and young folks fundraising.
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The gradual evolution of A Beauty We Didn’t Expect, acrylic and tempera on wood panel, 36” x 48”, 2021.
The later stages, the slower the progress. It took me several minutes to detect the differences between images eight and nine. (They’re there, I promise.)
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Get a peek at the inspiration behind and the unfolding of The Book Vault, the first painting of 2024…
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My awesome intern Paige created this short video about the evolution of Deep Roots, the final painting inspired a conversation I had in 2019 with Drick Rodgers and Julia Rodgers Clark in Rolling Fork, Mississippi.
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I made a short video about the creation of Ingrained Care, a new painting inspired a conversation I had in 2019 with Drick Rodgers and Julia Rodgers Clark in Rolling Fork, Mississippi.
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I made a short video about the early stages of Cultivation, a new painting still in progress that’s based on a conversation I had in 2019 with Benjamin Saulsberry, Public Engagement and Museum Education Director of the Emmett Till Interpretive Center in Sumner, Mississippi.
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