August in Grafton

August in Grafton

12 in. x 16 in., acrylic on canvas    

$200 unframed

My ancestors, the Morrill family, came from England in 1632 and set up their new home in Salisbury, Massachusetts.  By the latter half of the 1700s, one of them, Capt. Jabez Morrill, ventured north to Weare, NH, and his boy John came further north still, and built a homestead along the Springfield/Grafton NH line.  Four generations later, John's great-great grandson, my father, was born in Grafton.  The woods that connect Prescott Hill to Fowler Town and down to North Wilmot are all old family ghostland, with only Uncle Alfred's house still standing, stately and beautiful, up the hill from Robinson Corner.  There is an antique beauty up here, and the weight of perhaps being the last one to know and appreciate all this feels both sad and important.  This field off Route 4, riddled with goldenrod in August, looks south toward Ragged Mountain. I feel organically connected to this place, so much so that I felt the need to physically get down into the piece; I set aside my brushes, and painted the open, sweeping sky with my latex-gloved fingers.

 

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