On a clear day

Thoughts of Home

These blogs have featured paintings from more than a decade ago.

Let's mix it up and bring in something more recent.

This painting was done last year for my sister-in-law. We are both from the same town in Canada, though she was there much longer than I was. She married my older brother and South Florida became her home.

I figure living in Quebec Province into her adulthood, she had been cold and didn't feel the need to continually repeat the experience.

There is a thought I've had for years now. One that's gaining expression in columns and books: That immigrants (anyone who moves to a very different place, say from Idaho to Mississippi even) get stuck in a mental bind of their own.

They retain memories of the land they left, as it was. Some never really assimilate into their new place. Meanwhile, the land they left changes. Nothing is ever static.

That memoried place in their heads is all that remains of their home.

The painting, "A View of St. Georges East", is both real and idealized. The real town of St. Georges is in the northern end of the Apalachian range. The weather can be rainy and raw at any time of the year. I caught it on a good day. The view is a small detail of the town and a lot of clutter from power lines and other details have been left out.

A combination of photos from the internet contributed to my composition. Good fortune contributed to my getting the houses of my sis-in-law's family in there as well.

She was touched by the work and I got to spend some time in the "home" I remembered.

Anyone who leaves home and returns many years later can feel the dissonance brought on by that return. The world's population is on the move more than ever before. Huge swaths of people looking for something better while leaving a big chunk of themselves behind.