Back Door 2011 – acrylic palette knife 24×36
How many times did I stand at the back door and look out across the lawn, past the fields and out to the woods? Almost every day from the moment we moved to that farm in 1967. I did it every time I visited, after moving away. I had to paint that view – not from a photo but from my memory. That woods was where I played as a child – because our new farm was just beside my grandparent’s farm.
Of course there have been many other back doors, before and since. The back door to our city home was awkwardly placed in the centre of stairs but I remember watching my brothers skating on the backyard rink or in the summer I’d leap from the doorway to join my friends running through the water course we set up with sprinklers and buckets of cold water.
My Grandmothers’ backyard was all about washing lines and house gardens and the garden path to the chicken barns. This painting was of the back door I remember still – it beckoned to me – it was full of fresh air and green smells. It was solid and rustic. This was the kitchen where my grandmother started her married life, before they could afford a farm of their own and this is the farm-house my father took us to, away from the city and my friends, to a life of green and dogs, cats and horses.
I painted this in 2011 and forgot to catalog it until now. I hadn’t forgotten it – I did this one for me and although a few people have been interested in it I discourage them.