The Studio & Spirits Dream, Third Detail
Oil on Canvas
The Studio & Spirits Dream
One of three details, trying to get a full picture of the painting that shows it all at once.
DETAIL: “The Studio & Spirits Dream” Oil on Canvas.
I spent the last decade uprooted and on the road. I landed in a barn for awhile on a millionaire’s horse ranch, eventually turning the tack room into a studio that was liveable, enabling me to move out of the ranch’s bunkhouse (12 X 12 foot room with sink) and take up barn residence. It was a wonderful place for 4 years with horse pasture – about 200 occupants – out the door. Goats, sheep, mule named Corizon and Rambo the Ram in stalls and paddock on the other side, the Santa Lucia range all misty , mooned, sunned, gusted, and Milky Wayed before me. And it was the first functional studio I’d had in years. I wrote. And I painted.
This dream, this studio I painted there, is crowded with things I loved and hadn’t seen in ages, stored on the other side of America. Over filled with people I’d loved who’d died. With animals alive and not, who still owned my heart. With a chair from my twenties that no longer existed and the dream of my own bed again where such dreams could populate my nights. The cats who survived the move from Brooklyn then to Virginia’s wilderness then across country are on my bed, and some who departed before we got there, here too. My wonderful chocolate Lab – Rodin – is on alert at the bed’s end. A woodstove I’d seen once that would restore life to this heatless barn (I eventually got a kerosene heater). Some of my many thousands of books I carry with me that prop up my life are here, and all the intimate angels swinging through the undone work, the ready easel, the heart’s workplace.
Greeting Cards, Matted Prints, Laminated Prints, Mounted Prints, Canvas Prints and Framed Prints
whisperingruth
Truly amazing and beautiful Barbara . . .
bites
Barbra these are fantastic !
Barbara Sparhawk
Thank you so much, Ruth. And thank you bites. There’s a curved banister about center here with an angel posted on it’s end, others in the rafters, and more cats than come up in the photograph. I am deeply embarassed at my efforts with camera in front of the geniuses here.
Paul Louis Vil...
These three segments are amazing! I love the color and subject, your styling is unique and soulful! :D
Barbara Sparhawk
Oh Paul, thank you. I’m especially proud when the brilliant photographers here like my work.
~ Ademac
Barbara in 2 years I will be in the US…..........and apart from Kentucky you are number 1 on my have to see list.
Barbara Sparhawk
WOW! I should still be here, Adrian. I promise you an A-class tour of the environs. Let me know if you want any other have to see tips, though I sense you know the country. I figure Kentucky is horses, but we’ve got dressage and cowboys here, still the wild west.
Antanas
I like this art scene
Helene Kippert
Simply wonderful Barbara
Barbara Sparhawk replied
Thanks so much, Helene. I guess I make pathways and avenues too, room to putter trot and run.
billyboy
Jeeze, this almost brings tears… such a work from the heart, putting all the things you love and that inspire you into one beautiful room that is your dream studio. Is there no way i can see the whole painting?
Barbara, you are an amazing person with a deeply romantic soul and I’m so glad you put me on your watchlist, otherwise I might have missed your awesome portfolio.
Barbara Sparhawk replied
Thanks. With all my heart. So very kind of you to say these things. I need badly to get a camera that takes clear photographs, everything is so haphazard and badly shot on my pages. And yes, you’ve inspired me, I’ll try to get a good full shot of this painting and post it. It does look wonderful en toto, you kind of get drawn in. And thanks for all your terrific comments. I found your site through someone else’s comment list, and very glad I did. I promise to spend more time looking later this week. So very nice to meet you.
clarkey
I love the way you have presented three views of your dream studio, populated with the all the things you treasure.
Your journey has been a very wide-ranging one and given you an amazing perspective on the meaning of life’s journey and how we acculate memories, whether in things or people/other creatures, inspiration, and appreciation. No doubt, the future looks at you with beckoning arms and says, “Come and tread my pathways, pause and appreciate my rest stops”.
I am looking forward to seeing where your life takes you, with much anticipation, down the years.
Barbara Sparhawk
That’s beautiful, clarkey. Yes, yes…I do get that feeling. “Come and tread my pathways…” is so pretty and I’ll remember it always. Bless your heart for your kind words.