“Shady Grove” (Nellysford, VA)
Pencil, pastel, and drybrush
2023
$300 (email dterrydraw@aol.com or private message if interested in purchase)
When I first arrived in Charlottesville (lovely and genuinely historic, but, like Chapel Hill, a bit too self-consciously “genteel”) the sort of folks I met, both in town and the county, would occasionally mention the five or so small communities/towns where the surviving members of the “Whole Earth”, back-to-the-land, “old hippies” generation had eventually settled. These were always lovely places, but decidedly removed from the academic/courthouse (charlotttesville is the county seat) hothouse atmosphere of town.
Over the years, I met a number of these folks…..usually about ten years older than I was, and one or both folks in every couple had dropped out, ABD, in the third year of some obscure graduate school program at UVA. They were always building/raising chickens or goats or hemp or earthworms or solar-heating systems….or digging wells or spinning wool or baking carob-flour bread…..you get the picture? I gathered that they had sex a lot.
While I never wanted to actually BE one of them, I always enjoyed my visits, just as I did my doings with the Trappists (who did not have a lot of sex, insofar as I ever noticed) at that age.
I was delighted, when I spent the COVID epidemic hunkered down, up in the mountains, while I babysat the old Mark Addy Inn, to meet a few of the second-generation. My new-pal, Hoshin, lived at the inn and had actually grown-up in Yogaville (go to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogaville). I thought that they lived enviable, contented lives.
This is a portrait of Hoshin’s friend, Kevin.
As for the painting/drawing, itself? I, having finished it today after having begun it last year, think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. And, yes, I know…….I took my box of “Tricks I Learned From Andrew Wyeth” and spilled it all over the place………an occupational hazard of mine. That aside?…I do think that this is lovely. The elevated price is a reflection of the fact that I could happily live with this, myself, for years (Which I rarely think of a new picture).
Here’s a pretty (if, at two hours, LONG) soundtrack for the painting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4R936oEuH4