Woolgathering

Right Hand Turn, Sean W. Byrne, Copyright 2009, All Rights Reserved

For those of you who may not know, my father is an organic farmer in Seven Valleys, PA. (I did a series of paintings of the farm a number of years ago that are in the Celtic Springs Farm gallery on my website.) Right Hand Turn was inspired by two photos taken on a trip to the farm in 2007:

The photo on the left is of my father’s truck (with some antique handplows in the bed of the truck which were not included in the painting). The photo on the right is of the cow barn—which, incidentally, is the same barn featured in my painting Cow Barn:

Cow Barn, Sean W. Byrne, Copyright 2009, All Rights Reserved

I knew I wanted both the farm truck and the cow barn in the painting, but I initially struggled with the composition. I wanted simplicity… and I didn’t want the two to be competing for attention. Finally, I separated them… moving the truck way over to the left and the barn way over to the right. That helped, but they still felt like they were competing. There was no hierarchy.

Then it hit me. I lowered the horizon and flattened the landscape to help simplify the composition… pushing the rolling Pennsylvania hills to the far distance. I made both the truck and the barn supporting players, and made the sky the main player. Then everything started to fall into place.

Like the other paintings in the Meditation series, I wanted this one to have a sense of “hush”. I wanted a contemplative mood… a sense of quiet… an ephemeral quality. I changed the time of day to twilight, turned on the street lamp and the tail lights of the truck. The painting was almost there, but because sunsets are so beautiful—and twilight is such a magical time—I was worried that it was getting too “pretty pretty.” It needed an element to ground everything… a jolt of reality… an everyday, unpretentious object. It needed the traffic sign.

This painting took longer to evolve than Crossing or Cow Barn. It took longer to figure out how to get the various pieces to work together. There was a lot of re-working and visual editing to keep the composition simple… and to retain the honesty of the narrative.

Detail of Right Hand Turn

In the end, I feel a unique attachment to this particular work. Funny how that happens sometimes. Although I feel emotionally connected to all my work, sometimes there is one that just feels different. There are certain odd little things about this work that are special to me… such as the outline of my father’s head through the back window of the truck. And the truck itself, which I have known (in all its various incarnations) since I was ten years old.

Right Hand Turn is part of the Meditation series and is 32w x 16h, mixed media on hardboard tiles.