This painting began the way many of my paintings do — by standing at the end of my driveway and looking out at the land that shapes my days. Brown Earth, Blue Morning, oil on canvas, 16×20, is my attempt to honor the scene I see every season: a field worked by people who know the land as deeply as the land knows them. The field belongs to Buck Johnston, an organic reclamation agriculture practitioner whose approach restores, replenishes, and respects the soil he stewards. Watching his operation over time has made me more aware of how intentional, patient, and intimate good land-work really is.
The workers in this painting are bent in the familiar posture of harvest, moving through the potato rows with a rhythm as steady and grounded as breath. I didn’t want to overdefine them; instead, I wanted their gestures to carry the story. Their bodies make quiet arcs against the warm soil, each one absorbed in the simple clarity of the task. The little dog trotting along the edge was not planned, but once it appeared, it felt inseparable from the truth of the scene. Around here, there’s always a dog somewhere in the mix. He’s watching, wandering, or keeping company.
The field itself is a kind of living architecture. Potato soil has weight and shape; it holds shadows differently depending on the time of day, and on this morning the earth leaned toward a rich, warm brown that contrasted beautifully with the sky’s clear blue. I wanted the painting to keep that freshness. There’s the way early light softens the mountains and makes the colors glow before the heat flattens everything. Those layers of green, the bright strokes in the trees, and the high horizon line all work together to create the kind of morning that makes you stop just a second longer than you meant to.
Painting this scene felt like acknowledging something steady and true about where I live. These are the landscapes that don’t ask for attention but deserve it anyway: people working with the land, not against it; soil tended with care; mornings that start with purpose. Brown Earth, Blue Morning is my small tribute to Buck Johnston’s field, to the hands that harvest it, and to the ongoing relationship between place and the people who commit to it.