All Grown Up

New York-inspired
Nomadic Series (to see entire series, go to NomadicProject.com!)
24 x 30"
acrylic on canvas
Polonaise Art Gallery, Woodstock, VT

This painting was meant to be so much more. Niagara Falls, The Big Apple, and F.D.R’s birthplace were all going to be infused into the New York-inspired piece. So, why the wagon? Why the lonely land?

“All Grown Up” was one of those paintings where my subconscious took control of my brush. I hadn’t realized how much my home state had affected me until this canvas was completed. As we traveled through the towns that I knew so well, my chest tightened. It had been three years since I’d driven those roads, and with each mile, a memory would unfold. There it was, Livonia, the town that I grew up in. I walked that street in darkness with streaming tears, and suffocating fears. We arrive in front of my old house. They are covering up all of those stories and secrets with fresh siding, and new paint.

Above the tree that my grandfather planted, there is the window that I jumped out of to escape my father’s yelling. In the back yard still sits the pool deck. I remember holding the chalk line to help level the foundation as the summer sun burned my shoulders. I couldn’t where straps for a week, after that. The ice used to become so thick on that driveway that we could skate on it. The garage was the “gas station” for our bicycles. It’s all still there. This time, though, it looks so much smaller. The field that held our forts and trails is now another man’s front yard. Inside, I am sure they have covered our childhood paintings that mother let us create on the laundry room walls.

This place is beautiful, yet it always fills me with such a forlorn aching. Too many ghosts here. This is a place where you will never escape your name, nor become anything more than your past. My past haunts me, here. I feel small and sad, once again. No matter what New York has to offer, the history will always outweigh the present. I realized, in this state, that I am not capable of confronting my past. I want to close the box once again. The result, “All Grown Up.”