GETTING OLD: Crumbling Adobe and A Contented Horse
Not all southwestern architecture is adobe. Still, buildings made mud and straw brick define the southwest. You find old adobes in the most picturesque of settings. And the clay-like qualities of adobe brick allow the builder artistic license to create softly shaped meandering walls, rooms that defy a carpenter's square to constrain them into boring cubes. You don't see "perfect" adobes. That's one of the things that makes them so interesting. Adobe is a living, breathing thing, an elemental part of its surroundings, a landscape in itself.
I love to paint old adobes. For one, they generally occur in locales I love. You find old adobes in quiet places set back from the bustle of city life; you see them on protected hillsides or in remote corners, intuitively comfortable spots where someone once sculpted a retreat from long days likely spiced with hard work and no small dose of danger. Another aspect of adobe's appeal is that it's forever changing, trying its best to return to the earth from which it came. Cared for, adobe mellows gracefully. But it needs constant attention, loving, hands-on upkeep. These days, we're mostly too busy for that. Too modern. We like our corners square and our walls, permanent and invincible. Many strong, well-maintained adobes I passed as a child have since reduced themselves to crumbling walls surrounding tumbled roofs. Picturesque? Maybe. But also, sad.
The luckiest adobes have assumed second and third and fourth lives. Generations of family occupy many old adobes; laughing children run tiny hands along smooth, cool walls laboriously plastered by the hands of their great-grandmothers. Newcomers with time and energy and (mainly) money treasure the old adobes they purchase and repair.
And weary animals find shade in abandoned rooms that artists stop to paint.
GETTING OLD a 9" x 12" pastel by Lindy C Severns
available at Kiowa Gallery Alpine Tx March 15 2008 about $825 framed
I guess falling apart as we age can open new doors. Or windows. (Or an entire roof one day!)
I love to paint old adobes. For one, they generally occur in locales I love. You find old adobes in quiet places set back from the bustle of city life; you see them on protected hillsides or in remote corners, intuitively comfortable spots where someone once sculpted a retreat from long days likely spiced with hard work and no small dose of danger. Another aspect of adobe's appeal is that it's forever changing, trying its best to return to the earth from which it came. Cared for, adobe mellows gracefully. But it needs constant attention, loving, hands-on upkeep. These days, we're mostly too busy for that. Too modern. We like our corners square and our walls, permanent and invincible. Many strong, well-maintained adobes I passed as a child have since reduced themselves to crumbling walls surrounding tumbled roofs. Picturesque? Maybe. But also, sad.
The luckiest adobes have assumed second and third and fourth lives. Generations of family occupy many old adobes; laughing children run tiny hands along smooth, cool walls laboriously plastered by the hands of their great-grandmothers. Newcomers with time and energy and (mainly) money treasure the old adobes they purchase and repair.
And weary animals find shade in abandoned rooms that artists stop to paint.
GETTING OLD a 9" x 12" pastel by Lindy C Severns
available at Kiowa Gallery Alpine Tx March 15 2008 about $825 framed
I guess falling apart as we age can open new doors. Or windows. (Or an entire roof one day!)
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