Domiciles

There is a colorful piece of South Carolina history which is rapidly dissappearing and which my husband and I are endeavoring, in our own ways, to record. As large tracts of fallow fields are cleared when they are sold to developers, this history is briefly, tantalizingly revealed. During the course of the clearing, old homesteads, shot gun houses, and share croppers cabins reappear as a ghostly reminder of epochs past. In the brief weeks before they are razed, we go there to admire the red and green patinas mixed with the sparkling silver of a tin roof. The faded and cracked layers of paint on the sides of these buildings stand out in a surreal way against the textured grasses and blue skys like an abstract expressionist canvas suddenly transported from a New York studio in the 1950's and plunked down in the middle of a South Carolina landscape. And then they are no more. But in the brief time before their collapse into ruin, my husband has been photographing them, and I have been painting them. My paintings are sometimes literal, and at other times interpretive.
This ongoing series of paintings I've named "Domiciles." When I first started them ten years ago, they were tiny works on small wood blocks. I still paint them in this way like free-standing toys. But my last series are on larger canvases - 18" x 22" and 18" x 32." I suppose this is in part because although people like to collect my small works, tiny works yeild such tiny paychecks. The more important reason goes beyond that of marketing strategies, however. I just want people to see them and to get one last look at what will soon be gone forever.The "Domiciles" will be on view at the Pinckney Simons Gallery on 1012 Gervais Street in Columbia, SC as part of the Vista Lights Celebration this Thursday evening, November 15. Come and enjoy some art and history!