Longbed, shortcuts

Part of my current project "Rest and Digest," the painting explores a time of safety and satisfaction experienced within a small place and time. My experience in East Tennessee centering around a 3.5 acre piece of land once belonging to my grandparents. This painting features the memory of a tree that was part of the north boundary of the property. You may notice the tree itself is consuming and pulling everything in this painting towards it. Even the '85 S10 in which my grandmother and I occupy as we are out running errands, as she allows me to choose which "shortcut" we take to get back home. The truck is fleeing the frame which reminds me how far away this time and place is. A place and time I've reached for in search of peace throughout my adult life. The symbols of power in the wind turbines of Windrock, Tennessee are *distant*. The neighboring home is eclipsed by the tree but watched from the firepower resting atop Oakdale Mountain just above the quintessential East Tennessee barn advertising Rock City of Chattanooga to the south. There is much to explore within this frame, and yet the truck and the tree move you beyond the contents contained by the dimensions of the painting. Made possible by the testy planks forming the makeshift latter on the tree and the revving of the Chevrolet pickup slinging a little mud as we slip slightly off shoulder.