FROM FARM TO CANVAS: Painting the Rural Landscape Slant

Corn crib in front of silo

I live in a very rural part of New York State surrounded by farms. The landscape influences my work, but not always in the ways you might imagine. I pass this farm on a back road to the next town. I have stopped a few times to photograph it. What I really love is how the corn crib looks in front of the silo. It is a curved grid in front of a curved grid. In this photo it appears quite abstract. I love a subject that is completely real and seems completely abstract.

In the final painting I kept the grid on the right and added a grid from an industrial garage door in New York City on the left.

Again it would not surprise me if you could not determine the source of the image. It was the contrast of the flat grid and the curved grid that propelled me.

Silo, 64” x 94”, oil on canvas, © Leslie Parke 2014

Leslie Parke painting Silo

It challenges one's perception on several levels. The first being that I painted a perfectly representational painting that is utterly abstract. The flatness on one side and the barely perceptible curve on the other challenges one's sense of space. Both of these things create a subtle disruption for the viewer.