An Oil Painting And Poem “Past its Prime”

This painting is a metaphor for all of the rural beauty that is being lost to urban sprawl.  I used a palette knife to paint most of it and it was a demonstration for my Friday class but I finished it at home.  Take the time to look and appreciate, the soon to be gone, farms, barns and fields, they are more than just quaint buildings; they are our past.  They reflect the society we were before we became virtual and gadget oriented.

Past its’ Prime

This barn is past its prime

Red boards gone to gray with time

Voracious weeds starting their final feast

Vines and trees breaking the bones in its’ feet.

I stand along the road and paint

Its’ portrait like a red robed saint

Sadly out beyond the owner’s care

Its’ forgotten beauty a gift to share.

How many seasons have come and gone

How many more left in its song

A time gone now when roads were lined

With barns all red and in their prime.

I drove this lane a few months back

This once proud barn desperate; just a shack

Covered completely in tangles of green

More holes than not its fate now seen.

It was my pleasure to know this barn

But to pity the owners, lucky to see its charm

But it needs cows, pigs or sheep

To protect it from this ravenous creep.

Today our lives are bling galore

We consume our days always wanting more

But take that drive out to country lanes

Because soon all farms will have gone;

A shame.