Southern Paintings

    Slater Road, Morrisville NC, February 9 1999, Oil on canvas, 16" x 12"

Jesse Marsch grew up here. He is up in ages now and still has a very handsome distinguish look about him. Blond hair what is left not turn gray with blue eyes. One of his eyes has a drip in it like an infection. His size was huge bulk with soft large hands that turn every which way. I met him while I was painting a smoke house that was the only thing left from a farmhouse that set near the road. "There's a well right there also where the satellite dish is now.", he said. The road used to turn off and snake over to where the Sheraton is now. You can clearly see where the road turned off. Right there was a number of barns and out buildings. "All this land is good farm land.", Jesse said.  

      It used to be back in 1948 when he settled here that you could buy a acre of land for $250 dollars now an acre goes for $150,000. He knows a man that sold six acres just up the road for $125,000 an acre. Of course the fewer the acres the higher the price. I said that if you sold a few acres you would be set for retirement. But Jesse said, "These days you can't get no where with a half a million dollars." He knows a young man that came into some money and went to Florida. Last time he talked to him he was up to $6,000 and was coming back when he had spent $11,000 and he had only been gone for a few weeks.  

     There's hardly any empty land left anymore. I saw that there was still some sparsely lived on land below Sanibel Island in Florida but that was all swamp. I also added that there is some shoreline in South Carolina and maybe a little in North Carolina.  

      On up the road there is a old pack house. Jesse was really interested in suggesting that I paint some of the old hot houses they used to use for curing tobacco. They are a vanishing breed he said. His garage where he stays out of trouble is nearby where I was painting. He lives on down the road a bit and stays away from his wife as much as possible. He wanted to sell it all and move to one place but when he said his wife could not bring all her cats she said, "I reckon I'll just stay put." "My wife comes here every year for a Alzheimer's meeting at the Sheraton.", I said and he said "He didn't understand since they called it Old Timers around here." I said I would be glad to send him a photo of the paintings when I could done and he was glad to have it. He couldn't remember his telephone number and I said well he never probably called himself but his address was no problem. Slater Road was the oldest road in this territory.  

     I worked on the painting for two days. The spot I choose was paved but I painted it with a dirt road. Only about  mile has not been paved because it does not belong to the State. Somebody dragged the road the morning I started working. What with many cars using it as a short cut the traffic has grown over the last several years. As I sat there painting you would see  wide variety of cars and speeds as they approached the dirt. Some just turned around and others just took it at 50 mile per hour while others still slowed down and carefully moved onto the dirt. A lot of dust settled on my car and the painting has a fine patina of red dust. One guy driving a dump truck asked where the road went. I told him it went to the next exit on I-40.  

     After painting all day the first day I took a break and went looking around where Jesse had said there were a look of out buildings. I found what looked like the foundation of small home. Jars were strewn all around and rusting metal was all that was left of the stove, truck, refrigerator and furniture. I found a flowering tree that had been crushed by a fallen dead pine tree and clipped off a bit to bring home. I used one of the old mason jars still with the top rusted to it as a water container. I poked a hole in it and dribbled some water into what looked like had been squash. The hole acted as a holder and the tree had thorns.

  I came back the next day and finished the painting. I removed all of the junk around the smoke house and made it look like someone was living there which there were some people living in the the two trailers flanking the smoke house. A mail box on the road and a old plow rusting in front of the collar patch that was in front of a stand of the rusted color tall grass that is everywhere. The small cabin looked like it was made with logs or wide boards. It had a tin red rusting roof and was about ten by 8 feet. A full size door was on the right front and a small window about 2 by 2 feet was to the left of it. The rest of the walls looked solid. There was a bench along the side of the home and a huge stump in front. Just to the right was a huge gnarled oak tree that towered over all the pine trees. The stand of pine trees flowed the whole length of the canvas. Starting far away on the left and moving up to the back of the home and then drifting far away with the road. The clouds were all over those two days. They seemed to swoop up on the left and taper down on the right. The blue peeked through in various palace and I left the sky quite rough.  

     During painting many joggers jogged by. They all looked like they ran to the end and then back. It must have been five miles altogether. I guess I should have put some people into the painting but just missed my chance. They are such a extra effort you have to hunt and peck them in as you go because you need to study them as they develope.