8. Dairy Fresh Sign, Greensboro, AL

This image is one of the first that you see as you arrive to Greensboro, AL on Tuscaloosa Ave. Greensboro is a place, which seems in some ways caught in time. Main street is largely unchanged from the time when the town was in its prime. Greensboro is a town of 2,000, the county seat of Hale County, and the Catfish Capital of Alabama. As a Rural Studio Outreach Student, I spent a year living in an old house at the corner of Centerville and Main Sts., in downtown Greensboro. As I painted this image, it was a pleasure to remember the familiar sites of a small town in West Alabama.

7. Domino Sugar Factory, Baltimore

This image is very familiar to residents of Baltimore. The Domino Sugar sign is easily seen across the harbor and is pleasantly familiar. The factory is still operational and as a former Baltimore resident I recollect the vaguely sweet smell of the Locust Point neighborhood, where the factory is located. My friend Elizabeth and I frequently kayaked past the factory and the very large barges which transported sugar to and from the factory. In making this painting, I felt very nostalgic about my time in Baltimore: the people I knew there, the industrial history, the charms of "charm city." This painting inspired me to do a series of paintings of the iconographic signs of places which are familiar to me.  Postcards of this painting are available for $2, visit my Etsy Shop to purchase.  

6. Horseshoe Farm

While I was living in Greensboro, AL, I volunteered with an afterschool mentoring program called Project Horseshoe Farm. This program was started by John Dorsey, a doctor at Hale County Hospital, and is evolving to include fellows and a residential program for vulnerable persons in rural west Alabama. I think it is going to be an extraordinarily transformation opportunity for the fellows and participants in the program, offering compassionate support, where services were previously lacking. Check out their website: http://www.projecthsf.org/ This is an image of one of the buildings on the emerging Project Horseshoe Farm campus. The house is typical of historic homes in this part of the south. This painting is one of a series of paintings done on hot press watercolor paper, my first experimentation with this type of paper.

5. Parthenon

This painting was made while sitting before the Parthenon, in late May, in the hot Athens sun. I found a small section of shade in which to paint. I met another American painter who had discovered the same ideal painting spot and a young boy who didn't speak English, but was an enthusiastic observer of our work. It was delightful to take a moment away from the busyness of tourists and Athens to sit quietly and observe an extraordinary bit of history.