“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 something, 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, by contrast with the Whole Earthers, 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