In the Corner of the Curve,  

acrylic on board, 24 x 48 inches, 2011

I have driven by this old gin in Ladd hundreds of times since it’s “on the way” from Monticello to Pine Bluff.  Recently I decided to work up this painting.  Here we see it about half the way done.

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Sand in the Ditch,   

12 x 32 inches, acrylic on panel, 2011

I don’t know where this is...except that it is on the Delta.  We were driving along and I had to shoot quickly to get anything at all.  Later, looking at the slightly blurred photo, I was able to see enough to  build up this painting.  I had no problem getting the essential details of the house but I have no idea what the shapes in the shed are.

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Busy Skies,    

10 x 15 inches, acrylic on panel, 2011

This is from a photo I took thirty years ago.  It is of the old water tank in Dermott and a railroad crossing on the south side of town near where I lived for a time.  This is “the way it is” on the Delta...old water tanks and raised railroad tracks.  You don’t build railroads in the Delta unless they are raised.  So the individual items in the painting are just like they were; the twilight sky is from another memory. 

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Pokeberries 2   

13 x 24 inches, acrylic on panel, 2011

I did a painting of a pokeberry bush a couple of years ago.  I have to say, I’m really interested in the color combinations that you find with this plant.  I really have a hard time ignoring pokeberry bushes.  This is painting #2.

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Turner Methodist Church   

12 x 18 inches, acrylic on panel, 2011

Not too many miles northeast of DeWitt is this old Methodist church.  I’m not sure if we were on the Delta or the Prairie at the time.  They do look somewhat similar. 

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Arkansas Hwy 31

13 x 26 inches, acrylic on panel, 2011

I don’t do many watercolors.  Most of my sketches...or studies...are done in pencil with maybe some ink as the very dark values.  This started out as a pencil drawing and then I thought...”Why not just slap some color on this thing?”.  So I did and since it was on some 300 lb paper it was so enjoyable I kept after it.  Working “wet in wet” is not something I do on masonite panels but good watercolor paper gives you a whole different feeling.

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Systems of Storage

6 x 20 inches, acrylic on panel, 2011

This scene can be found on Arkansas Hwy 33 as you drive to Des Arc from I-40.  I like the juxtaposition of the grain storage units with the church.  It’s another of those things you can see everywhere in the Delta.

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Cypress and Slough

14 x 14 inches, acrylic on panel, 2011

We were driving around in eastern Arkansas and saw this cypress tree sitting in it’s own little slough.  It was a very nice composition just “as is” and that’s the way I painted it. 

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Mountains on the Move

10 x 24 inches, acrylic on panel, 2011

Storms on the Delta are very noticeable.  You can see them coming.  Or...if you’re situated just right, you will have a front row seat to Mother Nature.  The scene is of an actual place southeast of Pine Bluff but the weather is imaginary.

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S.E. Tucker,

 acrylic on panel 2010

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Sunrise at Mt Zion

12 x 18 inches, acrylic on panel 2010

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Dirt Road Shack, 

8 x 18  inches, acrylic on panel, 2010

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Selma Methodist Church, 

12 x 12  inches, acrylic on panel, 2010

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Sunset Near Lake Village, 15 x 33  inches, acrylic on panel, 2009

Lake Village, AR.

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Red Barn with Fords, 18 x 33  inches, acrylic on panel, 2010

Southeast of Dermott, AR.

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Birds on the Move, 12 x 33  inches, acrylic on panel, 2010

Barn and storage compelx south of Lonoke, AR.

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Winter Sun, 

8 x 18.5  inches, acrylic on panel, 2010

Church between Sherrill and Tucker.

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Cotton Gin at Sherrill, 

5 x 11.75  inches, acrylic on panel, 2010

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Keeping It Flat, 

11 x 48 inches

acrylic on panel, 2009

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Visitation, 

20 x 44 inches

acrylic on panel , 2009

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Pokeberries

18 x 36 inchesacrylic on panel    2007

When I visit Mt Nebo just south of Russellvile I certaninly am not looking for landscapes involving pokeberry plants.  I would be much more likely to look for boulders or cedar trees.   Somewhere near the visitor center, we were walking along when I saw this really large "scene" of pokeberries so, I snapped a shot.  When I looked at the developed photo I knew it was an attractive composition.   And I started working on the drawing pretty quick and it was only a few months later , not the usual years.  But the drawing took a long time and the painting much longer.  I think it's the colors that command your attention. Colors like these are similar to "fall colors" and they wake you up daily. 

 

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Honeysuckle,

20 x 24 inches

acrylic on panel , 2009

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Easter Morning at Mt. Zion, 11 X 14 inches, acrylic on panel

Mt. Zion Presbyterian Church on Hwy 425 where Drew County becomes Lincoln County, is a beautiful old building.  I’ve drawn it or painted it several times and I’m thinking about working up another view.  It’s on the list of National Historic Places but for me is the landmark telling me I’ve left Drew County.

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Wet Morning,    

10 x 22 inches, acrylic on panel, 2009

I don’t know much about this cemetery but it was somewhere on the east side of Lake Chicot.  I must have been on my way to Greenville one Saturday…exploring.  This is what I found.  It was wet that morning…sopping wet, to be exact.  It had rained during the night and looked like it might start up again.  For twenty years I’ve thought about working it up into a painting.  It’s not unusual for me to wait decades to do a painting.  There is evident neglect visible in this scene but that’s just the way things are.  If everything was mowed and neat, with little flags flying…I would never have touched it.  This is our world. 

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For Sale at the Cantrell Gallery, Little Rock, AR.

Across the Branch
27 x 8 inches, acrylic on panel 2008

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Lazy Boats

13 x 36 inches,
acrylic on panel 2008

When school let out my parents would take my brother and me to “the bluff”.  Technically it was Ozment’s Bluff and if this view were turned around, you would see the high ground that forms the bluff…somewhere between 15 and 20 feet from the water’s edge.  Before people hauled their boats around with them, fishermen would tie their boats up just north of “the bluff” and this view was a big part of my memories of Ozment’s Bluff.

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Bleak and Bare,

16 x 26 inches,
acrylic on panel 2008

For as long as I can recall or at least back to the 80s this church sat alongside Hwy 65 south of Lake Village.  I feel certain it’s not on any list of historic buildings but never the less it is an icon sitting there all alone witnessing to whatever part of the world travels along 65.  The red-orange foreground area is the “access road” east of 65.  Lake Chicot would be to the viewers left.  I think the season is obvious.

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For Sale at the Cantrell Gallery, Little Rock, AR.

Moving Off            18x36 inches       acrylic on panel  

I have always liked airplanes and crop dusters were a staple romantic part of the South.  Nowadays crop dusters are Ag Cats but still a part of the South nonetheless.  Between my home town of Monticello and Dermott, where I taught for five years, the hills drop off into the flat lands of the Mississippi Delta.  For a few years this was the scene along there.  The sky is handled like a watercolor and the foreground is more like fluid oil paint.  I enjoy the range that acrylic paint has and this painting pretty well shows just how wide that is.

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For Sale through the  Cantrell Gallery, Little Rock, AR.

Delta Gin    acrylic      2006

This old cotton gin used to sit on the eastern side of Lake Chicot and therefore, across the lake from Lake Village .  When I lived in Dermott, I would occasionally drive that way as I traveled to Greenville , Mississippi .  In some ways it was like traveling back in time.  I felt like it was actually 1941 or some such year.  Nowadays the east side of the lake is lined with vacation homes and the gin is gone.  I painted on the frame to make it seem like you were looking through an old (and transparent) frame at an equally old scene.   

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Cotton Fields,   

16 x  36 inches; acrylic on panel;  2007

When you live on the Delta you get used to field after field of cotton or soybeans.  During the period when I lived on the Delta, I took many photos of various fields, usually trying to capture THE cotton field of all time.  I don’t REALLY think that this is the “mother of all cotton fields” but it does convey a certain timelessness which is part of why I paint the Delta.  If you don’t pay too much attention to details, you could imagine this being a field in 1923…rather than the 21^st Century.

 

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Twilight on the Haney Place 16 X 45 inches, acrylic on panel, 2009

The Haney Place is where my mother grew up.  When I was a kid it was beginning to fade.  It took years to piece together old photos and memories to come up with this scene.  I believe that the only thing still there is the barn at the far left. 

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Stopping By Tucker, 

12 x 43 inches

acrylic on panel, 2009

Driving across the Delta is a relaxing experience to me.  Once we found ourselves in Tucker and the moment I saw these two buildings, I knew it was a painting.  (That doesn't happen very often.)  The store to the left was at one time the "Tucker store" to folks who lived around there.  The house belonged to the Tucker family as well.   

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Downtown New Edinburgh  acrylic on panel, 2009

New Edinburgh used to be a busy little town between Warren and Fordyce.  We would travel through it on our way to visit my Dad’s brother.  Obviously, New Edinburgh flourished when little burgs like this had “stores”…several of them.  What is missing from this view is a couple more stores…one of them of brick construction.  Some of the stores are homes now and most are empty or have been converted to carports.  This is what it looks like in the 21^st Century when you don’t need as many stores.

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Folded Up  12 x 36 inches, acrylic on panel, 2009

I did a smaller version of this which I liked a lot and then I decided to do a larger one.  It’s just a small house beside a two lane highway.  It’s covered in aluminum siding and will probably be burned down soon enough.  I call it “Folded Up” because of the folding chair leaned up against the front.  In the larger version I added the woman standing at the front door because at this size it seemed too empty. 

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That Store Bought Window   6 x 13 inches, acrylic on panel, 2009

This is some house down in Louisiana.  We were headed to Vicksburg but this house was not far from Eudora, Arkansas.  I would call it a “shotgun shack” but it’s sporting a hipped roof, which gives me pause.  I was interested to see that someone had put in a modern window and it stood our like a sore thumb to me.

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Scattered,

 4.5 x 18  inches

acrylic on panel, 2009 

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Rocket Ship to the Moon   acrylic on panel, 2009

I did a drawing of this old tractor many years ago. I kept trying to figure out a way to do a large painting of it. I enjoy the challenge of painting machinery. I confess these big old back tires nearly defeated me! I forget just when it was that I switched from a daylight painting to dusk with the full moon rising but that did it for me. 

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Crossing and Crosses,    24 x 24 inches, acrylic on panel, 2009

Down on the Delta, the highest places are railroad crossings.  I can’t remember just where this is but the shadows caught my attention.  Other than that, it’s just another thing that describes the Delta in my mind, at least.

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Our Lady of the Bayou 
16 x 48 inches, acrylic on panel 2008

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Blackbirds
8 x 24 inches, acrylic on panel 2008

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SOLD -through Cantrell Gallery, Little Rock, AR 2009.

Twilight Gleaming

16 x 20 inches, acrylic on panel 2008

Better than a year ago, I did a painting of “Old Chocolate” for some friends of mine in South Arkansas.  “Chocolate” was a “work truck” and I was going to do another version for my own “entertainment”.  Which this is.  It was going to have more caked on mud but I got caught up in trying to deal with the colors and reflections and so the mud got left behind.  Maybe another time for the mud.

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Late Afternoon, Greenhill     24x36 inches       acrylic on panel  

My uncle, Garvin Scoggin kept this feed shed in this field just off the gravel road for his cows on the north side of the road.  That’s his barn to the right in the distance.  What interested me in this painting was the way the shed seemed to touch the gate and the slightly rolling hills to the right.  The painting is almost cubistic while being more or less realistic…something I find very satisfying.  By the way…neither the herd nor their fast food stand are there anymore.

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St. Sebastian’s Bucket    24x30 inches        acrylic on panel  

This is an old well bucket that my Scoggin cousins used for target practice down near the creek.  I took a photo of it about ten years before I ever did this painting.  I called it St. Sebastian’s Bucket after the Catholic Saint who was martyred by being shot several times with arrows.  It seemed appropriate in my mind and not every painting title works as well as this one does.  I’m extremely fond of this painting because it is exactly the place where I reached a workable plateau with acrylic paint.  And I remember my red headed cousins when I look at the rusted parts of the bucket.  I think it’s wonderful when a painting can tie memories to visual designs; it’s like sparks jumping around in my brain. 

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