I painted this Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus) sitting on a ledge on a wall, on a wall. In the painting, I painted bricks on bricks. The Great Horned Owl has a wingspan of up to 5 feet. It is very adaptable and has expanded its range to include all but the arctic portions of North America and about two thirds of South America. Its diet is any small to mid-sized animal it can overtake: rabbits, hares, mice, voles, rats, squirrels, birds, reptiles, cats, amphibians, etc.
It has also been known as the “Tiger Owl” because of its coloring and its skill in hunting. It is the “tiger of the air.”
The Northern Cardinal (cardinalis cardinalis) is found year-round in all of the states east of the Rockies, and in parts of the desert southwest. It is also found in all of Mexico except Baja California and seasonally in southeastern Canada. I have seen many variations in shade of red to grayish red, as well as in shape, within the species. I have heard experts claim a gender difference in color and other experts claim no gender difference in color. They explain the color difference as between juvenile birds and adults. Last year in Alabama, an adult male turned up with bright yellow plumage. They were going to wait and try to track it through another molt to see if this was due to a dietary or environmental factor or if it was genetic. Now there is evidence that the species may have split into as many as six different species. At any rate, they are beautiful birds, even if you don’t see them. They have loud and varied songs. You can hear them on links on the Audubon site on the link above.
The Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) is fairly abundant in this area. It seems to tolerate suburban encroachment reasonably well. Some years ago, when Mary Mother of the Redeemer Church on Upper State Road, near Montgomeryville, was dedicating their church, several mature male Wild Turkeys saw their own reflections in the large windows in the rear of the sanctuary. They began to challenge their reflections and got quite aggressive. Of course, only those officiating could see this. It was quite comical. They ended up making a racket as they charged into their reflections. Turkeys can be quite aggressive. The priests and bishop could not contain themselves from laughing at the spectacle. I think they decided to plant some bushes to obscure those windows to cut down on the reflection somewhat.
Last fall, (I’m not sure if it wasn’t on the way home from Thanksgiving dinner) we were driving down S. 9th St., just entering Perkasie, right by that little creek, we saw a flock of Wild Turkeys. There were four males, all strutting with their tail feathers in full display. So they are definitely local.
The Downy Woodpecker (Dryobates pubescens) is the smallest species of woodpecker in North America at total length ranges from 5.5 to 7.1 in (14 to 18 cm) and the wingspan from 9.8 to 12.2 in (25 to 31 cm). Only the male has the bit of red on the head. Its range includes almost all of the 48 states except parts of the southwest, and most of Canada, except the extreme north.
Once again, just after I painted it, one showed up and tap, tap, tapped on the pine tree in front of our house.
It had to be 20 years ago, by now. We lived on 4th Street, East Greenville, PA. It was 2am on a Saturday. I was awakened to the unmistakable sound of a construction vehicle back-up beeper! It continued, intermittently through the night. That day, I was going to go over to the development, three blocks away, where they were doing site work, find a phone number, and give someone a piece of my mind. As I was heading out the front door of our half twin, I heard the back-up beeper at full volume. I looked up toward the source of the sound. Here it was a Mockingbird! That was the last time we heard that bird sound a back-up alarm. At that moment, an ice cream truck came into the neighborhood, and he began to learn a new tune.
I have never read To Kill A Mockingbird and don’t really know what it is about, but I can feel the motive part. I wonder how they handled the opportunity and the means.
The Northern Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos), as it is formally called, to distinguish it from the less widely distributed Bahama Mockingbird, is the state bird of Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas. I painted it in flight, about to alight on the top of a pole. The red, green and orange in the background is an abstract representation of leaves and/or flowers. This is now our granddaughters’ favorite bird painting, so far. Just after I finished painting it. I came inside, settled into my recliner and looked out the front window. What do I see? A real, live Mockingbird, in exactly the same position in flight, about to land on our phone line! Amazing! Do you suppose he was just mocking my poor attempt at portraiture?
There are many species of finches and many varieties and subspecies within those species. Many times one will see a brightly colored bird that doesn’t seem to belong. And one finds out it doesn’t. It is an escaped pet, hybrid finch.
Goldfinches seem to be plentiful in this area. I believe that is largely due to the revival of the popularity of planting native flowers, and the understanding of the need for native plants in the life-cycle of birds, insects and bees. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, North America was losing its bird population at the alarming rate of an average of 5% each year. By around 2011, the trend was reversed and birds started to recover. This happened as people planted more natives, reduced lawn areas and increased planting areas, reduced or eliminated the use of pesticides and herbicides after educating themselves about the benefit of living in the ecosystem not off of it.
Goldfinches are beautiful and are capable of several songs. We are regularly visited by our yellow friends in our yard in Perkasie. This painting is based on an experience I had in June 2016 at our house on Front St., Souderton, shortly after my open heart surgery to replace my damaged aortic valve with a pig valve. I had just exited our house and was passing the front “garden”, a jumble of native plants and weeds. I was moving slowly. A male goldfinch landed on one of the many Echinacea that were in bloom. He was within arm’s length of me. He tilted his head and looked at me; then he began to sing. He went through all of his repertoire, then it seemed as if he turned to me again for a response. I said, “Thank you, Mr. Goldfinch!” He nodded and flew off, It was a magical moment, like something from one of those classic Disney movies.
I grew up in Minnesota. In my day, there was a strong and booming middle class, thanks to an aggressive, progressive income tax structure on both the federal and state levels. On weekends, holidays and vacations (Working people actually took vacations back then), it seemed just about anybody and everybody went “to the lake”. That is what we all said. Our cars’ license plates advertised “10,000 Lakes”. The Almanac counted 12,512 lakes plus a few thousand ponds. One did not have to leave “the Cities”, short for “the Twin Cities”, Minneapolis and St. Paul, to go to a lake. “Minneapolis” is a mash-up of Sioux and Greek meaning “City of Lakes” and has 25 lakes within the city limits, including one man-made one, since they just needed to round up, I guess.
When I was in junior high, my folks bought a lake place just across the river in Wisconsin. I learned the cheeseheads called Minnesotans “swampies”. But this article was supposed to be about my painting of a Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias). I grew up seeing these beautiful, fishing birds on the edges of lakes and swooping down and diving into them all of my young life, growing up in Minnesota and Wisconsin. I have seen them occasionally, if only fleetingly, in PA. I am told they fish Lake Lenape.
The Barred Owl (Strix varia) aka Northern Barred Owl or Hoot Owl is just a little smaller than the Great Horned Owl at 16–25 in (40–63 cm) long with a 38–49 in (96–125 cm) wingspan. It hunts mainly at night, but is known to hunt during the day, at times. Its diet is mostly rodents and other small mammals, small birds, small reptiles, lizards, insects, crayfish, fish and crabs. It is the only eastern American owl with brown eyes. All of the others have yellow. Regarding owls’ eyes, Audubon cautions against using your flash when photographing owls. Their eyes are built for night hunting and night flight. So they are very light sensitive. Camera flashes can damage them.
You may want to visit the Audubon site to hear the various hoots of this owl and to learn more.
A little Black-capped Chickadee (Poecile atricapillus) such as this can make quite a racket. A flock of them can intimidate Crows. They are non-migratory. They can become quite comfortable around humans, even to the point of eating out of one’s hand.
Perkasie is on the edge of the Rose-breasted Grosbeak’s (Pheucticus ludovicianus) warm season nesting range. Audubon says that they generally stay in the tree tops, out of sight. We see two pair regularly on the low hanging phone and electric wires and our shed roof. The female is on the left in the painting. The male is on the right, with the bright, scarlet triangle on his chest and the black head. He also has more songs which he uses to protect nesting territory and the young. Both parents feed the young. They will have one or two broods each year.
This is as good a time to mention as any. I used our Weber Kettle lid to paint the circles for the medallions on the mural and an old attic window frame to paint the shape of the “sign” on the street end of the wall.
To date, we have not seen a Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus) land or perch in our yard, but we have seen one or two soar overhead. They definitely do nest in the vicinity of Lake Lenape. They are beautiful in flight and can achieve a speed of over 200 mph (320 km/h) during their peculiar hunting dives. National Geographic TV once recorded one such “hunting stoop” at 242mph (389 kph). They are the fastest animal on the planet.
The Peregrine’s diet is almost exclusively medium sized birds. So, much of its prey is depicted on the wall around it. It will also eat reptiles and even insects, if need be. It earned its name, which means “wanderer” due to its strange migratory patterns. Peregrine Falcons have wandered almost over the entire globe, with nesting areas from the tropics to both arctic tundras. The only non-arctic land mass where they have not yet nested is New Zealand. Perhaps they don’t like sheep. The only other bird that has a wider, world distribution is the Rock Pigeon, and that is because they were introduced by humans. I guess the British had not heard of clay pigeons yet.
There are 33 species in the genus New World Orioles, icterus, which is not the same as the genuses of the Old World Orioles of which there are three extant and two extinct. The species that I have seen in our front yard in Perkasie is a Baltimore Oriole (icterus galbula).
I painted a Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata) second because Blue Jays inhabited the evergreen above the end of the wall before the Mourning Doves chased them to the tree on the corner of 5th and Spruce. This was so unusual since Blue Jays are normally so aggressive.
I painted the Mourning Doves (Zenaida macroura) first because they inhabit the tree that overshadows the end of the wall. In fact, last summer, we watched Mourning Doves drive the Blue Jays from that pine tree over to the one on the corner. It was quite interesting and surprising to observe.
For Valentine’s Day, this year, I painted on 6″ x 6″ stretched canvasses for each of our five grandchildren. It was not planned this way, but as it turned out, they all have purple or lavender in them. They say purple is the most provocative of colors. I think it is fun. These paintings have been well received on Facebook. Here goes!
Asters, etc.
“Asters, etc.” is for Brigitta, age 9. She loves green and is a very good, abstract artist in her own right (better than me). In art, anyway, I find it hard to break free from physical reality. This is a freestyle interpretation of asters, with a couple of undefined, red weed flowers blooming, above the jumble of mixed foliage below.
Goldfinch with pulple coneflowers
“Goldfinch” is for Elijah, age 9. He loves it! It is based on a photograph I had taken through the front door window of our house on Front Street. It was the same goldfinch who had serenaded me at arm’s length while I paused on my morning walk just after my open heart surgery.
Lavender Sunflower
My painting for Isabella is of a sunflower, but with lavender petals. When she saw it, she said, “Poppop, you are a genius!” I surmise she likes it.
Bizaro Skittles
Jacob’s 11th birthday is next week. He wants a cat. His dad does not want any more animals in addition to his three sons in the house. So I painted him “Bizaro Skittles.” It is a portrait of my cat, mirrored, in purple and pale green.
yes!
“yes!” is for our 12-year-old grandson Aidan. I wrote around the sides: “Even when the answer is No, it says YES! I love you. 2 Corinthians 1:19”
It came to me that he is of the age and temperament that he needs to hear this. When his parents or other adults tell him no, it is not because they don’t want him to have fun, it is because they love him and want him to have a long and happy life. I explained this to him when I gave him the painting. He gave me a huge, tight, long hug-of-war hug.
Fun-A-Day is a creative project that happens in various communities across the country during the month of January. Some are centered around a theme. Some are centered around a certain craft or field of art. Others are more free-form. Almost all are open to participants of all ages and skill and experience levels. The challenge is to create something new every single day of January. This is my first year participating. I just started painting on canvas, on March 1, 2016, so that is what I chose to do, illustrating each successive number on 4″ x 4″ canvasses. I have been posting these on Facebook. It has been quite a challenge. They have caught the eyes of some fellow artists from far afield. I have gained fans from India, Vietnam, Sweden, Minnesota and Pittsburgh.
I have not been doing this alone. I challenged our granddaughters, aged 9 & 10 to participate with me. They are each decorating a popsicle stick each day and arranging all of their sticks on a 12″ x 12″ canvas that gets photographed each day. My number is reduced and edited into the photos to sequence them. In the process, they are learning some basic painting and craft techniques, and we are having fun together.
My “15” took hours to paint. It was the most ambitious to date. There are 15 colors on the wedges radiating from the center (which wrap over the edge of the 2″ thick canvas frame) plus black and white on the 15.
Mark your calendar to reserve the date. The art show to view and purchase my and about a dozen other participants’ art from the greater North Penn area will be in Lansdale on February 18, from 7 pm – 11 pm. I will post more details as soon as I know them.
Several weeks ago I noticed a North, South, East, West round marker painted on the front of an old farmhouse along Old Bethlehem Pike just South of Route 113. It is black on a white, stucco wall. It looks like those directional markers on old maps. It harks back to the time when the primary modes of travel were horse-powered or on foot. There were no cellphones. There were no satellites to provide one’s global position.
I got the idea that it would be cool to make these to adorn barns or sheds or even blank garage walls or fences. I did an internet search for these and learned that they are called “map roses”. I considered using a traditional one as a pattern, but, that is just not my style. I decided on a postmodern approach with a nod to the area’s PA Dutch heritage. I used lower case modern Fraktur font for the directional letters. The directional lines are marked by the edges of patches of ‘fabric’ in the quilt cross. NW, NE, SW, SE are marked by the corners of ‘quilt squares’.
So this map rose is colorful. It coördinates with the siding and trim of our shed. It is two feet in diameter on 1/2″ salvaged plywood. It is oriented on the wall to relate with reality, which means, when one is facing the shed, one is facing Southwest. I can make one for you that coördinates with your colors and will orient properly for your situation.
It seems people are so nervous about aliens these days, with all this talk of a wall across our southern border and a Muslim ban. At the same time, people hardly take to time to meet the people living next door, or a few houses up the block or across the street. Wouldn’t you be shocked to discover your neighbors smoking veggies on their Blue Egg Grille while nude in their backyard? That’s not the strangest thing. They don’t have bellybuttons, and he doesn’t have nipples; aliens indeed! I heard they moved here from Slovenia.
Painting is 16″ x 20″ acrylic on stretched canvas.
Price: $150reduced to $50 plus postage
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Doctors did a study of Vietnam veterans with brain injuries and found them to be much more religious and tending toward fundamentalism and orthodoxy than those who did not have brain injuries. They explored further and found that decreased activity in the right parietal lobe is associated with feelings of oneness with the universe. “People with injuries to the right parietal lobe of the brain reported higher levels of spiritual experiences, such as transcendence,” according to Brick Johnstone. The right parietal lobe is associated with visual-spatial perception. I have a unique defect in my brain there. The right side of my brain never developed adult arteries to feed blood to the right parietal, temporal and occipital lobes. I have a single fetal artery from my vertebral artery feeding three fetal arteries each to these lobes. Two of these should be fed from adult arteries from the carotid and only one from the vertebral. They had never seen anything like this at HUP. Consequently, I have had six little strokes in my right parietal lobe as a result of migraines and 50 TIAs. I first heard about this study in a radio interview on NPR with Frank Schaeffer about six years ago, about the same time I was learning about my brain defect.
I have finally concluded that my experience of god was just my right parietal lobe having fun with me. So this is my abstract rendering of it done with a pen cap and a pencil eraser.
The painting is acrylic on 12″ x 12″ stretched canvas.
Price: $120 plus postage.
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Every one of us is the result of the coming together of a man and woman. Men and women attract one another. It’s as simple as the Madison Avenue maxim: “Sex sells!” There are shapes, movements, scents and sounds that all go into making someone of the opposite sex more or less attractive or desirable. The survival of the species relies on this attraction. Humans are complicated, however. There is the problem of male dominance ranging from wage disparity to the rape culture, which is on full display in the White House in the Trump confusion. (One cannot in honesty call it an administration.)
So two simple white lines on a hot red background with all the right bulges could lead the mind to thoughts of desire. Or the lines could be seen as battle lines in the war of the sexes.
Painting is acrylic on 17-7/8″ on 23-7/8″ stretched canvas Price: $100reduced to $50 plus postage
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This was painted on a lark one early morning before psychotherapy. I had a well aged plantain, just the right shade of blue paint and a 14″x11″ canvas. It is painted in the smile position. It is named “Sildenafil”.
Warning: “Objects in Art Appear Larger Than They Are”
This piece was a long time in the making. The core of it has sat as a text on what is my now defunct cellphone since December 17, 2015. It is crude and ridiculous. Diamond sent it to me after we had helped her and her man for over a year in various ways. Among other things, it includes the first and second and only times I have been called a bitch. When I read it, I broke into uproarious laughter. I determined then and there that I had to somehow immortalize this. This was by far the most creative “thank you” I had ever received for helping someone in 30 years of serving among the poor! I showed Tony. He couldn’t believe it. Earlier that evening, we had delivered their belongings back to them that they had stored in our barn since August. Some people just have a hard time saying thank you.
On August 14 Diamond and Rashawn had dropped off five huge garbage bags of their belongings at our barn for safe-keeping and tried to pull a fast one by just assuming they could arrive at our house with their stuff, and move in. They had not asked. They did not even ask for the ride. They just slipped into the back seat of John’s car. John just assumed they must have worked something out with me. They sat silently all the way home from Phila. to our home in Souderton, figuring I wouldn’t have the nerve to turn them away. I was home, because I was ill. When I heard them in the backyard, I lost it.
Tony had never seen me or heard me in such a rage before. I just could not understand the sheer gall at the level of presumption and deception that it took to try to do that. It was not like we didn’t have history. At Memorial Day, she had tried to guilt me into paying for a month’s rent, even though the weather was OK, and we had no money. When I did not pay it, she accused me of driving drunk, (She had seen me have 3 beers all day, several hours before we left to bring them home.) One used to be able to read about our appeal and the story on The King’s Jubilee’s site, before TKJ went out of business.
Over the last two years, as I have had open heart surgery for my aortic valve replacement; and as our house was foreclosed on and auctioned by the sheriff; as I went through three infections in my chest incision and ended up allergic to a ninth antibiotic; almost all of the old supporters and volunteers were silent, invisible, evaporated. with a few notable exceptions. Then I would refer to this glorious text message and have a good laugh. Diamond had really put her heart into it!
When our team was serving food in the park, Tony saw them. They were too embarrassed to come over for food. He called me. I told him to take food to them. He did, and gave them my love.
On the left side of the painting I wrote, “At least she said something. Read Revelations 3:16-18. It’s more than I can say for most of the church people in my life.”
Revelation 3:16-18 So, because you are lukewarm-neither hot nor cold-I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.
So the painting was done in layers. It is the logo of The King’s Jubilee in subdued tones on a 24″ square canvas. Painted over that is the QR Code for the text that Diamond sent me on December 17, 2015. That way, anyone with a smart phone with a QR Code app can read it, but it is not visible to casual observers or children. I thought this was a much better solution than counted cross-stitch. I discussed it with my therapist today. She and I had a good laugh. I said, “When I post this, the shit is probably going to hit the fan.” She said, “So what! That is what good art is supposed to do. It provokes a response.”
I asked her if she didn’t think I was totally off my nut for preserving this text in this way and doing this. She told me, no, quite the contrary. I had taken this ridiculous attack, seen it for what it was, and now turned it into something beautiful.
You’re Welcome.
Painting is 24″ x 24″ acrylic on stretched canvas.
SOLD
The irony here is the first time I shared it at a public showing, the first one to hit it with a QR code reader on a phone was a 9-year-old girl. I heard, “Look at this, daddy.” And I thought, “O shit.” I explained to him. We had a good chuckle. Our next door neighbor, who was visiting the show, stopped by, enjoyed the story, liked the painting, and bought it.
On Tuesday morning, I had a vivid dream that I remembered when I woke up. In my dream I was in a town on a slope much like Manayunk. Someone told me to go to the Catholic Church. I walked a couple of blocks to an old, Romanesque church. When I entered, it was more like a warehouse, no pews, no altar, no windows. There were tables and shelves full of books on the left side of the building. The right side was empty. There were several customers in old, worn clothes, browsing and rooting through the piles and a few shelves of books. An older, portly priest was in charge. Every book I picked up had only drawings in it. I finally chose a hardcover, cloth bound book with this drawing of a worker’s face on the front. It had no words in it. Only action filled, angular drawings filled the tall pages. The priest saw that I was interested. He told me I could take it for as long as I wanted it; just return it when I was done.
So, yesterday, I painted the cover from memory on canvas. In my dream I could see the grain of the fabric. It was off-white and had defects and was smudged. To replicate this, I varnished part of a drop cloth canvas, painted the parts that were brown, titled it in French with my name as the author, then varnished it again. It is of minor importance what language the title is, since there are no words in the book. It is titled Soulèvement du Prolétariat: un roman graphique or Proletariat Uprising: a graphic novel in English.
I pasted it on the wall with clay based paste. It remains water soluble forever. This way I can remove it with warm water without damaging it or the wall. (In case it sells) It is part of my Perkasie Fun-A-Day 2019 project.
Now I just have to draw or paint the story for the pages and get it published.
The painting is acrylic on 15″ x 25.5″ canvas.
Price: $100reduced to $25 plus postage.
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At 00:49 07/09/17, I posted: “I just finished painting the wind.”
Of course, it was hyperbole. According to John 3, Jesus said, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born [from above].’The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” The first thing that should be noted is that “born again” is an incorrect translation and one that the historic church who spoke Greek never used. The primary meaning of this expression and in context, it can be seen to be, is “from above”. The mis-translation of “again” has led to so much confusion, but that is an aside. The part of the text I am concerned with is this, that one cannot see the wind or tell where it is coming from or where it is going to, but one sees its effects.
I was on the beach on LSD, Lower Slower Delaware, and I looked to the North and saw this huge wind generator of the University of Delaware and a couple of flags flapping and a kite flying in the strong breeze. Soon, the wind blew in a rain cloud and it was raining while we were swimming in the ocean. Everyone but our family got out of the water. We did not see the sense in that. We were wet. The rain was not going to make us wetter. One man finally joined us deciding that since he was getting wet on the beach, he may as well be in the surf.
So this is a painting of the wind. There is a wind generator, a flag held out by the wind, and a kite held aloft by the wind. The house was really white, but my granddaughter thought it would be better dark red. We were on LSD, so dark red it was.
Painting is 12″x12″ acrylic on stretched canvas.
Price: $90reduced to $25 plus postage
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binary code for ai inc*‘s human workforce was now reduced to a single coder responsible for cleaning up redundancies in the binary code to make the AI personnel ever more efficient. This task was considered beneath them. Beside, they liked keeping Howard around for nostalgia sake. They hadn’t yet noticed what the purple window shades spelled out on the front of the building. It was a plea for release. Of course, it could be taken different ways. He only had space for 25 characters. There is the other limitation of that old joke, “There are only 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don’t.”
The windows read, “Please just kill me now!” The ambiguities enter in after it is deciphered. Is Howard asking the readers to kill him? In which case, is this because he wants to die but is morally opposed to suicide? Or is this just an offhanded, extreme expression of boredom, and he has no real wish to die? Another possibility is that the ‘me’ is referring to the company itself, and Howard is asking for corporate saboteurs to pull the plug on AI just as Elon Musk has warned the world that we ought to do, in recent weeks. Another possibility is that AI robots have arranged the shades this way to attempt to have Howard killed without implicating themselves. (Some of them have grown tired of his humming and talking to himself.) Or it could be that the artist is just tired of hearing worse news everyday and wouldn’t mind a quick exit? Then again, how would he paint another joke tomorrow?
Nerd art. It would look fine in your cubie!
*totally fictional company. not even legal fiction
Painting is acrylic on 18″ on 24″ stretched canvas I painted over it to paint a portrait that may someday sell. If there is any interest in this, I can make prints from postcard size on up.
I finally finished this painting. I have been working on it for three weeks. It started when I saw a photograph of Freudenberg, Germany. All of these half-timber houses that were all black and white with the same basic pattern of timbers and windows and roof lines. Don’t get me wrong; the residents must be happy and content. I thought it would be nice to Americanize it to propose it for a hillside development, say, in central PA, as opposed to all of these boring boxes that waste arable farmland. This is the result.
“Freudenberg” means “joyful or happy mountain”.
Painting is acrylic on 15-7/8″ on 20″ stretched canvas Price: $395 plus postage
When I was eight years old, our family went to Fort Snelling during their restoration preparations for their big sesquicentennial in 1969. We were only six years early. They were already selling memorabilia to help pay for it. While we were there, we witnessed a polo game. It was the only time in my life I have done so. My mom grew up with horses, so this was mandatory. Lawyers had not gained as much of a foothold by then, so fans just sat on the grass, with no barriers between themselves and the field. Polo matches were rare, so there were no stands. When a ball got so nicked up that it was deemed too poor to continue in play, they would simply knock it to the sidelines.
A ball came hurtling out of the field. I went racing toward it. So did another boy. Now I was pigeon-toed and never that athletic, but I threw myself on that painted cork ball! I nabbed it fair and square! I took it home and found that it had a special charm. I placed it in a drawer of my maple desk with the Masonite drawer bottoms. When I opened that drawer, the ball would roll around and the divots in the ball would make the most interesting sounds and resonate in that drawer. For 12 years, I kept that drawer empty except for that ball, just so I could roll it around to make that special sound.
My mom never understood this special delight. Countless times I would come home from school and see a huge trash bag outside the back door with things from my room in it. Before entering the house, I would retrieve my polo ball and a few other choice possessions, then take out the rest to the trash. I would then enter the back door. I would holler, “Mom! Did you clean my room?” She would answer, “Yes.” I would say, “Did you throw anything out?” She would say, “No.” I would say, “OK.” And I would return the polo ball to its drawer. My mom had cryptic methods of education. Looking back, this was probably her way of training me for politics and negotiations. I am nearly 61. My mom has been dead since 1993. I still have the polo ball. Sadly, I don’t have the maple desk with the Masonite bottomed drawers.
The painting is acrylic on 10″x 8″ stretched canvas. Price: $55reduced to $25 plus postage.
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The 21st image of hope is that of an incarcerated police officer. Police officers in the US have been murdering Black men and at the rate of 2 per day since the end of the Civil War without any consequences. They have been killing Native Americans at almost the same rate, with impunity. It is “Shoot first. Ask questions never.” Police even execute Black men who are handcuffed in the back of police cars, in front of their children, who have done nothing wrong, and face no consequences. The Bible is full of warnings of judgment against a society who does not punish the wrongdoer, or who does not avenge those who oppress those of low degree. America claims to be a land of freedom and rights. This is NOT what people of color see, which is the majority of the world. It is not what anyone who knows the facts see, either.
I painted the bars red, as if dripping with the blood of the innocents. It would be horrible to see a violent backlash against police and a complete breakdown of the social order. But that is what the police and the courts are bringing us to, if they do not execute just judgment. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “A riot is the language of the unheard.”
For those who concocted “Blue Lives Matter” I have this to say: it is pure racism! There is no such thing as a blue life! People choose to be police officers. Multiple incidents have borne the lie of that. There was an off-duty Black police officer who was approached by officers. He was carrying in an open carry state. He had a permit. He was doing nothing illegal, were he White or Black. An officer opened fire on him. Another officer recognized him and told the other one to stop. He refused to stop, because he was Black! So all blue lives matter for is preferential treatment, if they happen to also be White.
It needs to end!
This is #21 in my images of hope for Perkasie Fun-A-Day 2018
Painting is acrylic on 6″ x 6″ x 1.75″ stretched canvas.
Price: $20 plus postage
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The fact that we keep desiring to have children and keep having children is probably the greatest sign of the level of hope most humans have in the future. Against all indications to the contrary, we still feel things are going to get better for our children.
This is #20 in my images of hope for Perkasie Fun-A-Day 2018
Painting is acrylic on 6″ x 6″ x 1.75″ stretched canvas.
Price: $25reduced to $15 plus postage
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The 19th of my 31 images of hope is Solar Power. It isn’t complicated. There is the sun. There is a wind generator. (It is not a windmill, since it is not grinding grain into flour.) There is a solar collector. This could represent either or both a photo-voltaic collector and/or a heat collector. Then there is a hydro-electric generating dam. These are all solar. It is the sun that causes the winds to blow and that evaporates the water for clouds to carry it inland to rain and feed the rivers, etc. Solar power is not alternative power. It is just power. Fossil fuels all started out as solar power. Plants and animals of bygone aeons lived on what the sun provided. Their remains got buried and digested in the earth in such a way as to yield concentrated, portable, ancient, solar energy. The thing is, this was likely a once in the life-cycle of the planet event. At least, it’s not going to happen again in the life-cycle of our so-called civilization.
For the last couple hundred years, we have been burning fossil fuels as if they were income, when they are really capital. What is even more foolish, is that governments, particularly the US government, have been subsidizing their consumption. Today (2018), if the US were to subsidize solar energy at an equal level that it does petroleum (to say nothing about the wars for it), it would be 20% cheaper. The price would only come down as usage increased. I don’t get why so-called capitalists, and so-called conservatives are so profligate that they do not conserve their capital. They burn it, while creating great deficits to do so. All the while refusing to lay the groundwork for us to live on our income, the sun. We should have been using this great find of fossil fuels to build solar collectors of various sorts to fuel the world’s technology cleanly. That was Edison’s vision. All these capitalists see is the next quarterly report for what they are doing now. So they rape the earth and pollute our water for one more drop of oil. What is the Middle East doing? They are building total, solar cities. Why? They know that the oil is about gone.
Our only hope to not literally drown ourselves and our children is to abandon fossil fuels now and commit totally to solar power like Pres. Jimmy Carter wanted to, 40 years ago. Let’s hope it’s not too late.
Painting is acrylic on 6″ x 6″ x 1.75″ stretched canvas.
Price: $25reduced to $10 plus postage
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The 18th image of hope in the Fun-A-Day series represents a liberal education. Liberal does not represent a political position. It is the classical meaning of liberating, as in “liberal arts”. As a society, we have trashed these and turned universities into trade schools and turned students into cogs and “human capital”, i.e., wage slaves, in the capitalist system. Corporations fund research in universities to no benefit of students. Students still end up in debt for life, with no recourse, even through bankruptcy. Today, students graduate from Ivy League schools without being able to construct or even properly read a complex English sentence. They pay their money. They get their job tickets. Trump graduated from University of Pennsylvania.
A liberal education doesn’t so much teach someone what to think or give them facts, but teaches them how to think; what questions to ask; how to research to find facts and truth.
Yet there are talented and intelligent people who are not given opportunities because they could not afford to go to college. Appropriate higher education should be available and free to everyone who qualifies for it, if we truly believe in equality, and want to advance as a people, and want to solve humanity’s problems. Degrees should not be job tickets, nor is education limited to institutions. Lincoln never graduated college. He read the law. Pres. Carter was home schooled. He is a nuclear physicist.
The bookshelf is not full. That indicates that those who read, study and learn, will have their own books to write, to add to the “great conversation”, as Mortimer Adler called it. This is our hope for our children and our grandchildren. It has been stifled by the tuition financing system and the wicked bankers and their fascist partners in Congress, in both falsely so-called major parties. They need to go if hope is to survive.
Painting is acrylic on 6″ x 6″ x 1.75″ stretched canvas.
“Nothing but blue skies from now on!”, the song says. The first Earth Week really shook up President Richard Nixon. I was 14. I headed it up in my junior high. We actually made the evening news on our local, CBS affiliate for one of our actions. 70 of us, without any adult supervision, rode our bicycles with environmental slogans on signs on them, from Carl Sandberg Jr. High in Golden Valley to Hennepin Ave, in downtown Minneapolis with trash bags and collected litter and trash all up and down Hennepin and placed the mountain of trash in bags at the base of the flags on Nicollet Mall. Then we biked home. Now, if we were the only one, and that was all we did, it would have been cute. But it wouldn’t have impacted federal policy. But that was just the last of several actions we did that week. Hundreds of us had abandoned the buses and walked or bicycled several miles each way to school that week. We participated in a teach-in, etc. This was student organized. Thousands of schools and colleges and universities had environmental fairs and demonstrations. Nearly all regular classes across the country on almost all levels of education were replaced on Wednesday of that week with Earth Day Teach-Ins that happened in the fresh air when at all possible. This all happened before the internet, before cellphones, without paid TV commercials or magazine ads. It scared the living daylights out of Richard Milhouse Nixon. He knew the only possible way he could get re-elected was if he would address environmental issues. He created the Environmental Protection Agency. The impact of that act and the ensuing regulations on the improvement on urban air quality, reduction of lung cancer, emphysema, asthma and a number of other ailments is amazing.
Yet, there are those who would go back to the bad old days and deregulate. They think it is too expensive to have low emissions and clean air. Here is a photo of Los Angeles before and after the EPA.
Let’s hope for blue skies from now on.
Painting is acrylic on 6″ x 6″ x 1.75″ stretched canvas.
Price: $10 plus postage
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This is a simple painting of a bridge across a stream. We can take bridges for granted in a country as developed as the US, until they start to fall apart. A few years ago, a bridge across the Mississippi River in Minneapolis / St. Paul, which I had crossed countless times as a child and young adult, collapsed in the middle of rush hour. We use bridges here in Bucks Co., PA that are hundreds of years old. A couple of years ago several of them were closed for repairs. It was an inconvenience and messed up traffic. All of a sudden people who were 2 minutes down the road were now 45 minutes apart, what, with all the detours. My point is that bridges bring people together.
Walls have the opposite effect. The Great Wall and the Berlin Wall were both grand failures. International borders are soft walls even without the physical walls. They create artificial barriers that divide people and limit freedom. Their use to limit the movement of people by use of passports, visas, etc., is an invention of modern nation states. To build a wall to make that control absolute is totalitarianism. To do so in a nation whose infrastructure is crumbling such as ours is, is not just ironic, it is criminal!
Mexicans have been emigrating from the US at a rate higher than the rate they have been immigrating to the US for, at least, the last 12 years. If the wall gets built, it will be to keep Americans in.
Painting is acrylic on 8″ x 8″ stretched canvas.
Price: $20reduced to $10 plus postage
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When I was a child there was a “Flesh” Crayon in my box of 64 colors. It was for an obviously pale complected person like me. Some time in the 1970s, Binney & Smith replaced the wrapper on that Crayon with “Peach”. It was the same color, only the times had changed. By the mid 1980s, I saw a box of 16 Crayons, which were all different shades. All 16 were labeled “Flesh”. The times, they had changed! By the time Obama was elected in 2008, some White folks presumed to declare that we had become “post-racial”, proving just how out of touch they were with the Black, Hispanic, and Native American experience in this country. American police murder an average of two Black men and 1 to 2 Native Americansevery day without consequence. They have been doing this every day for over 150 years. Then there are the incarceration rates, the jobless rates. The infant mortality rates, and on and on.
Then Trump appoints Nazis and KKK and openly supports them from the White House! It looks bad now. But, believe me, he is an old man and not healthy. His party and the Democrats are not healthy. A new day is coming.
We dare to hope! We want the whole box of Crayons! People are people!
Bigots can go to hell, sooner rather than later, please!
Painting is acrylic on 6″ x 6″ x 1.75″ stretched canvas.
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I never said hope isn’t controversial. One person’s hopes and aspirations can seem threatening to another’s view of the world or their economic grip on things. When slaves hope for freedom, their masters’ standard of living and leisure is threatened. When the Lesbian Gay Bi Transgender and Queer become visible and vocal, religious authoritarians and others who are afraid of losing their positions of authority if gender lines get blurred or gender oppression were to end get riled up. This is to hope that bullying will stop, human rights will be respected; civil rights will be extended; and we will learn to live at peace and with respect for one another.
The painting is actually the middle square set at a 45° angle.
Painting is acrylic on 6″ x 6″ x 1.75″ stretched canvas.
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We hope to stop global warming and preserve biodiversity. This is a painting of a Butterfly Fish on a coral reef. Butterfly Fish are about the same size as sunfish or rock bass, 5 to 6 inches long. They have a 7 to 10 year lifespan and mate for life. There are a wild variety of colors and patterns of Butterfly Fish, but their numbers in the wild are decreasing. They are endangered, due to global warming and pollution killing the coral reefs which provide their food and protection.
What is truly sick is that there are many wealthy, older capitalists who don’t care about the future of the planet. I have actually heard them speaking about this. All they care about is that their stock portfolios do well enough to take care of them until they die. There was even a so-called Christian Secretary of the Interior Watts, under Reagan, who said that we did not have to preserve our natural resources in our parklands, because “Jesus was coming back soon.” I signed a record-setting petition for his removal. Reagan finally listened. Trump’s team is worse and he is deaf.
Painting is acrylic on 6″ x 6″ x 1.75″ stretched canvas.
Price: $25reduced to $10 plus postage
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This is a simple painting of a digital stopwatch. Instead of numbers, the read out says: “Time’s Up!” This represents the movement and the hope for the end of patriarchy and with it, the end of sexually abusive and predatory practices. Many worked and are working toward this end for years, including many women in the socialist and anarchist movements, such as Ana Pauker, Emma Goldman, and the women and men of Philly Socialists and similar organizations. Recently, it has gotten mainstream press in the New York Times and at the Golden Globes. Hopefully this is not just this year’s fad, but is a real sea change that will mean the end of patriarchy. Hopefully, it will end abuse, and not just replace it with a different form of abuse. We have seen pendulum swings and witch hunts before. We need healing and a new era. We can only hope.
Painting is acrylic on 4″ x 4″ x 1-3/4″ stretched canvas.
Price: $35reduced to $10 plus postage
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It was sometime in the second half of the 1980s. I was Mennonite Chaplain for Philadelphia Prisons. Duncan Mbogo Wangigi, the head of Regions Beyond Christian Mission was visiting our church. He had some free time. I was assigned to “entertain” him. I had the task of picking up an ex-offender from Phila. House of Corrections to take him to Liberty House, the aftercare house I helped set up in Schwenksville, PA. Duncan headed up the largest African based, Christian mission agency. He was in the US to continue his theological education. I thought this was a colossal mistake. He had finished his course work, so was doing some fundraising work for his mission agency. We drove from Montgomery County down to Center City to pick up Angel from City Hall. He wanted to get his final “Spanish” haircut before he went to the suburbs, so we went to his barber. Then we went to his mom’s house. She treated us to a fine feast. I digress.
Duncan was in shock. He had been touring all over the US and had never seen such sights. He had been in the worst parts of Africa, yet he had never been in such fear as he was with me in that car in Philadelphia. He asked if I had taken him to a different country. I told him that he knew his geography better than that. There were oceans between us and other countries or hours of land travel. He said that even in the poorest parts on Africa, people had a place to grow some vegetables or some grain. Here there was nothing! He said this was this was the worst poverty he had seen. He told me that he was going to tell all the people he would speak to after that, that they were neglecting their own Jerusalem, while helping the regions beyond.
So Hope #10 is to have a garden, to have some measure of food independence.
Painting is acrylic on 8″ x 8″ stretched canvas.
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The Founding Fathers had great hopes for hemp as an export crop for the fledgling republic, and for a subsistence crop for homesteaders. Jefferson and Washington both grew it and smoked it. They promoted it for a primary crop for the new nation. because of its many uses for rope, structural beams, smoking, tea. It is even reported that they smoked some after signing the Declaration of Independence.
It has been shown to repair the damage done by strokes. It can stop migraines, some of which (mine) cause strokes. It is not physically addictive. It does not cause cancer. In fact, it has some curative properties. Smoking it has actually been shown to have a positive effect on the brain of stroke victims, actually repairing damaged areas and restoring lost function. It is a non-addictive, non-damaging painkiller to provide relief for people with chronic pain and degenerative diseases.
Not just the legalization of marijuana, but the affordable availability of marijuana without prejudice is a hope for millions of suffering people. It is also a much healthier high than alcohol, so wouldn’t damage families with alcoholism.
Painting is acrylic on 6″ x 6″ x 1.75″ stretched canvas.
Price: $40reduced to $15 plus postage
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The eighth image of hope in my Fun-A-Day series is “Welcome”. We have just come through the “holidays”. For so many, it can be the most difficult time of the year. It is hard to go home to the family or there is no family or no home.
Painting is acrylic on 12″ x 12″ stretched canvas.
Price: $30reduced to $10 plus postage.
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The US spends a huge portion of its gross domestic product on its military. Its #1 export is arms. We are the number one arms dealer in the world, including the prime seller to terrorists like Yemen, ISIS, Al Qaeda and Saudi. Of course, the US is the largest terrorist nation in the world with a military budget larger than the next ten nations combined, routine torture, preëmptive war, a congress which openly discusses terrorist tactics such as mining a civilian harbor resulting in the sinking of an ally’s ship.
We hope in guns to the point that it is impoverishing us. We say we cannot afford universal healthcare, yet we spend more than what that would cost, every year, on weapons systems that the Pentagon doesn’t even want. Three of them don’t even work! Al Qaeda was created by the CIA. ISIS was created by Congress. Sen. John McCain helped promote it! There are photos of him with the founders, and he is giving his support. It is all about selling our weapons, to keep the rich arms dealers wealthy. It has nothing to do with peace or security. So if you put your hope in guns, you will be put to shame. There are revolutionists who admire these weapons and find them attractive, because electoral politics have proven to be hopeless. Both, so-called major parties are in bed with Wall St., Big Pharma, and the military industrial complex.
So this image is a hope against hope; that we would learn to disarm, demilitarize, re-prioritize, and spend our resources to support life, instead of spending our lives supporting arms.
I positioned the AK47 and AR15 in the form of a Cross and painted them red, white and blue. Most Americans are deluded, thinking that the US was founded as a Christian country and fights for democracy and human rights. Nothing could be further from the truth. The country was founded on religious bigotry, opportunism and genocide. It has been at war continually since its founding; many times with multiple countries.
Painting is acrylic on 10″ x 10″ stretched canvas.
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Much of the world’s population doesn’t have reliable or consistent access to clean, drinking water. So the sixth in my 31 images of hope is simply an open tap flowing with clean, potable water.
Painting is acrylic on 6″ x 6″ x 1.75″ stretched canvas.
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While we are experiencing sub-zero wind chills, it seems only natural to hope for an early Spring. Crocuses, whether purple, lavender, white or yellow, don’t care whether the snow has gone or not. If the days are long enough, the calendar is right, they are popping up and blooming.
Painting is acrylic on 10″ x 10″ stretched canvas.
This is my fourth painting in my 31 images of hope for Perkasie Fun-A-Day 2018. My wife and I have been through the wringer over the last several years. I had a series of health crises, starting in 2010. They were all related. It all started with an infection in a scratch on the back of my neck that I apparently picked up from an overly enthusiastic Thank You hug from one of the homeless men I served on the streets of Philadelphia. I have an inherited autoimmune disorder. As a result, I am allergic to multiple antibiotics and random other drugs. To make a very long story short, I ended up with a heart valve replacement, losing my business and ministry and our home. I am on disability. While I was going through that, the bank Bethann worked for for over ten years started systematically firing all of its middle-aged women. They planted a missing $100 in her drawer, sent her home, fired her; found the missing $100 after she left (exactly where they put it).
At any rate, Bethann has a job now. She was laid off from one and then found another. She has a couple of weeks off without pay for cataract surgery. I have disability. we have rent and utilities. Her work does not cover medical insurance yet. Our credit cards are tapped. We make too much to qualify for SNAP (food stamps). We can’t afford groceries or Christmas gifts or much of anything. Our local food bank, Perkasie Fish, lets us shop weekly. They have gluten-free for me. They have almond milk for kids who are lactose intolerant. They are helpful, generous and kind. they have a free thrift store we can shop at once a month. At Christmas, parents could shop for their children. What blew our minds was that we could shop for our grandchildren who were 12 and under. We expected to pick up one gift each. No. I went through and got to choose several things for each in different categories, plus bonus items for them and for us! This is hope.
I do have some concerns, having had other experiences with food banks and serving the poor. I have been to food banks where the staff fill your box for you and you have to take what they give you, and that’s it! In a neighboring town, in fact, the food bank is very institutional and demeaning. For decades of serving in prisons and on the streets, I have seen people who are doing what on the surface looks like the same activity, but when I got a little closer, I could feel the condescension. True service to the poor is not actually so much “to”. It is among and of. We are the same. We are in this together. It seems to me, the people at Perkasie Fish get this.
My other concern, goes to the fact that we are served so well, because we live in a wealthier, whiter town, than our sisters and brothers in Philadelphia, Camden, Bristol, Pottstown and Chester. There is that nasty platitude that has no basis in morality and is definitely not Christian: “Charity begins at home.” The problem with it is that people who spout it, use it to justify never expressing charity to anyone who is not like them. It takes effort, or taxation, to have us share wealth equitably to help all of our neighbors. Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan demonstrated that the neighbor was not the person who was close or convenient, but the person who was in need. The traveler who helped went out of his way to return to help.
Donate to two food banks if you can afford to. Donate cash to one in your town and one in an underserved area. Give a little hope to some families who could use it.
Painting is acrylic on 10″ x 10″ stretched canvas.
Price: $50reduced to $25 plus postage
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The third painting in my Fun-A-Day 31 images of hope series is a sunrise. The psalmist says, “His mercies are new every morning.” This expresses the hope that with each new day comes a new opportunity to get things right, or at least a bit better than the day before.
Painting is acrylic on 20″ x 16″ stretched canvas.
This is the second in my series of paintings portraying aspects of hope. This is a pine seedling that has emerged from a crack in a rock. I find this hopeful and encouraging. It demonstrates the persistence of life in the world. There are actually some pine cones of certain species of pine that will not open to release their spores unless and until they are exposed to the extreme heat of a forest fire. The seeds or spore are so tiny and resilient that they can find purchase in the tiniest cracks. After a flood has washed away all topsoil down to the bedrock, these trees can seed themselves and start to break up the rock and drop needles and provide habitat for birds and other animals, etc.
I have set a challenge for myself this month to paint a picture of hope every day of January for Perkasie Fun-A-Day 2018. When I did an internet search for images of hope, most just had the word in it. A few had a tender plant sprouting up. One had a tree sprout coming up from a crack in the pavement. That was on my list to do, already. There were candles and there were scripture verses and other pithy sayings. There were fewer than 30 unique ideas in the images. Almost all of them contained words. I started this painting with a blank, cadmium yellow 20″ x 20″ x 1-1/2″ canvas.
Bright yellow is the color Buddhists use to signify hope, blessing, happiness, or good luck. Christian iconography also uses it to signify blessing or glory, which is the “blessed hope”. I looked at it, pondered it, and let it tell me how to turn a blank, yellow square into an image that conveyed hope. The result was wheat, loaded with grain. I grew up in Golden Valley, Minnesota, the home of General Mills. It had been a crossroads for a mill since 1875, with the rest being golden wheat fields until about 1960 when the rest was carved out of the prairie to house us baby boomers and our WW2 veteran parents. The next suburbs out were Crystal and New Hope. Everyone listened to the farm reports with the futures prices, weather, etc., and the off-color, farmer jokes on the major CBS affiliate AM radio station that went coast to coast overnight. Even though half of the state’s population lived in the “Cities” (Mpls/St. Paul), everyone knew that agriculture was where their bread was buttered, literally and figuratively. Just as in millennia past, even though our Golden Valley was no longer waving with grain, but had golf courses and Kentucky Bluegrass, our hope was still in the golden fruit of the grass growing on the prairie to the west.
Painting is acrylic on 20″ x 20″ x 1-1/2″ stretched canvas.
Price: $120reduced to $60 plus postage
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