Back Room Blooms

Back Room Blooms

Oil on canvas, 36x36

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I'm in Connecticut this week, in anticipation of my opening Friday at the Lighthouse Gallery. On Wednesday, there was a car fire on I-95, and Route 184 was clogged, so I chose a back route to get to Westerly.

It was all familiar, and it was all different. It was my back yard and not my backyard. I was driving with a resident's knowledge, the map clear in my head - but I am now an outsider.

I grew up around here, lived here more years - all put together - than I've lived anywhere else. My brother and sister and I went to school in New London, my grandparents moved here from Pennsylvania to be with us, my parents were known and were part of the community. We were from New London.

Now, none of us lives in New London. And while my brother and sister live in Connecticut, they don't live in the area we called home.

Now, I've found a home, a place of the heart, a place that calls out to me.  I love Wachapreague, and the Eastern Shore, but I am still discovering it.

Here, I find myself looking for the trees that autumn always singles out with color. I recognize the smell of the air. I know there will be deer at the edge of that field. I see things that I remembered and I see changes, too, even in this short time.

Soon enough, I will feel like an outsider. But this place will always be with me. It will always be in me. I will drive down a road and, like waking from a dream, I will remember something that no outsider could ever know - a family that once lived there, a tree that once stood there, a shortcut I discovered as a teenager.

This place was home, and now it's not home. But it will always whisper "home" to me.

***

"Back Room Blooms," the painting at the top of this blog entry, will be on display as part of "ColorFull,"  through mid-November at the Lighthouse Gallery, 744 Long Hill Road, Groton. The opening reception is tonight - Friday, Oct. 12 - from 5-8 p.m.

I have some new work in the show, as well as some familiar pieces, and have lowered prices on some of my pieces, hoping to sell them and make some commissions, too, for the Lighthouse Vocational-Education center.

So please come, and see my paintings as well as brilliant pieces by the fabulous Ronet Noe!