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I'm Marsha Connell, and this painting Salmon Barn
was painted between Santa Rosa
and Napa and the barn really is salmon color.
Well, it was! Except recently I just was on that road and they changed the color
and I
was so disappointed. My interest
in painting barns actually
came from having grandparents who had a farm in Upstate New York
and having a grandfather, Sam Riss, who was a farmer
and an artist. And I was his first grandchild
and he used to draw and paint with me. And he told me that I should paint
everyday
or draw everyday and that it was really about
practice and seeing. And I once had a dream about my grandfather about his
hidden
studio in the barn. And I realized how important that was to me. He really
didn't have a studio in the barn. It was really in the house and he just set it
up on the porch whenever
the chores were done and he had finished with the
milking. He was a very hard worker.
I think I've also had some influences from Wolf Khan,
who is a painter, who is a contemporary American painter, who has become famous for
painting barns, mostly
his own barn of the farm that he owns in Vermont.
I'm not a romantic about barn painting. I'm not interested in painting
all the worn brown boards and
all of the details that make it kind of nostalgic.
I'm a contemporary painter, so even though it's a classic kind of scene,
I think that my work fits in what you would call
modern times or contemporary times because
I'm not looking to report
all the small things. Although
you can be and be a contemporary painter. But I fall in the realm of somebody who
is representational,
but not a photo realist. I'm interested in mystery,
so I don't want to define everything. I want it to be a little mysterious, what
might be in the spaces.
I also am interested in the spaces between
and that's why I think I have one building here and here and then something
that's going
beyond in the middle.