The Factory and theTree
oil on canvas aprox 18x24
I am going to post for a bit, a series of older works I pulled out of my storage spot... this is work I still enjoy from the mid 1980's till 2010. Hope folks enjoy.
This one goes way back... this was a student piece. Early in my last year of undergraduate school I painted this on location. I was looking for a nice spot along the beautiful Wattuppa Pond in my home town, Fall River. But the shoreline was grown over abd not accessable. The city, an old mill town, was once the textile capitol ofcthe entire USA, really. At some point I was behind the Kerr Mill, an old factory turned outlet store selling factory seconds and overstocks, before they got all commercialized.
I was thinking about Charles Sheeler and Picasso, Pollack, and a few others... this was the very start of finding my voice, thw genesis of mt self The beginning of what I would ultimately call fusionism, my "style" when asked what it was called.
One afternoon, I entered my studio to find one of my professors, Sig Haines, (sophomore painting), sitting in my chair, studying at this painting. Sig is a colorist with impeccable drawing skills, considered by many, including me, to be a true contemporary master. He looked from the painting and said to me, "I love coming into your studio, Chuck. There is always something good on your easel." Later, as I was working as an artist, showing regularly, gaining a following, he told me this was the painting that told him I could be a painter. (Took awhile to catch up to my Swain school peers, as I was a transfer student). That comment has stayed with me 40 years. I remember it whenever I look at this painting. I have never let it go.
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