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V....Vaughan:
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Texas artist, V.... Vaughan, knows all about this sort of progress. Austin's suburban sprawl reached the edges of her family's two-hundred acre, multi-generational farm last year. Construction began on new roads and toll roads, and Vaughan's farm, (the place she has painted for the past thirty years), will soon vanish. This reality hit hard. "I expected to tell stories to my grandchildren here," says Vaughan, but knowing that her family must leave, and that the land has fallen into the hands of developers, she decided to do something about it. Beginning last summer, this energetic artist launched her "Last Year on the Farm" project, a pledge to herself to paint one painting of the farm, every day of her final year on the farm... three-hundred and sixty-five small, plein air paintings." Though she has a great studio overlooking the northern sections of the farm, her greater studio is outdoors, in the fields and rolling pastures of the farm itself. It is out here where she has painted her "Last Year..." . She is a true 'daily painter', and has even taken that concept one step further. Within this whole series are four groups of paintings that correspond to each season of the year. "I call these my '24-in-24'", which is just like it sounds: twenty-four paintings in twenty-four hours. Each of these marathon sessions represents a season. There is a series of 24 each for a 'Fall Day Last Year on the Farm' , a 'Winter Day...' and 'Spring Day...' "and I have just completed a 'Summer Day...' series of 24 in 24." Vaughan admits that she cannot escape life's normal interruptions, even for a day, and so '24-in-24' is usually accomplished within an eighteen hour period. "This is not as hard as you'd think because all I have to do from my studio deck is turn, and a new farm painting presents itself to me." By painting the same landscape for an entire year it would seem that Vaughan would embrace the old adage "paint what you know", but she has a unique take on that sentiment. "I call that idea the 'comfortable familiar'. The things that I am comfortably familiar with are things that don't excite my eye. Stuff I'd never paint...like my bedroom closet. The things I want to paint are the things that make me ache because I can't grasp them fully! I am most drawn to this farm landscape because it continually surprises me, and still makes me ache to paint it! Especially now, knowing that permanent change is coming soon." This change provides the energy and excitement in her "Last Year..."series. The sense of change, is the driving force for these small works, and it shows! These paintings capture all of the seasons, the warm sunsets, the driving rainstorms, the cold black nights, and even the lightning storms of Central Texas. When other artists talk about the "Last Year..." series they most often want to know how Vaughan approaches a painting. What is her method or technique? "I tell my workshop students not to be overwhelmed. Take on the changing light and other plein air challenges. And then I threaten to drag them out to paint 24 in 24!" For her, a painting is all about communicating the impression. "Before I pick up the brush I ask, what 'impresses' me about this subject? There is some instant reaction that I want to capture, so I set about to define it, then to describe it with paint. I have found, most often, that the impression is usually contrasts, such as light vs. dark or warm vs. cool." Though the "Last Year on the Farm" painting project is drawing to a close, Vaughan's final day on the farm will be October 31st. She reflects on some important lessons that she has learned both as an artist and as a woman. "Artistically, painting every single day has made me a way better painter. That is the most obvious change that has occurred this past year. However, I believe that the best lessons are those you do not see. These lessons are the story of life. I will probably feel like part of me is gone when I have to leave the farm, but I've learned that we are not defined by where we live, or what we own, but by who God says we are: individuals of stature and dignity. My message, is that our 'place', (a land, a house, a family, and possessions), cannot define us; they do not make us whole or complete us. And though I know this is absolutely true, tomorrow I will probably be sad anyway about leaving. Before I could paint here I had to wait and raise my children. I ACHED to paint what I was seeing every day. Now I have the time, but will no longer have this farm I ached for! Yet, the lessons I have learned this year teach me, wisely, to simply let go and let the seasons change. And, they do, right on time, faithfully as God has promised. The ground is barren when there is no nurturing rain; the sun comes up after terrible storms; the fields become white for harvest when they have been watered, and cows are fed when we wisely put aside hay for the lean times. For over thirty years I have been the 'artist' here observing with a deep desire to communicate what this farm, and its life, teach." Vaughan's "Last Year on the Farm" certainly carries that message. It is a visual parable that teaches us to embrace and celebrate the ending as well as the beginning in each season of life. Her farm and what it represents to all landscape artists may be lost, but through this project, its spirit is captured and will live on through these paintings. Plans for "Last Year on the Farm" paintings ... include a book and museum shows. “ I will have a few exhibits, starting right here on the farm in the month of October. And the next exhibit is scheduled for May-June 2008 at the Rockport, (TX) Center for the Arts. I will keep a fewpaintings, for my own healing...and my kids get first dibs on a few. I expect many of these will be sold and I will turn them loose." When this project is complete, Vaughan has no intention of slowing her frenetic pace. ..."I will teach more workshops, do 24 Paintings in 24 Hours in other locations and do some "Drive-By Painting" along the way. I've been doing drive-bys for years (with a designated driver, of course!) . It's a whole other story, but still about capturing the scene before it passes by...change happens so quickly." As she paints and travels the American landscape and captures it in a "drive-by" the point is not lost on her that ...the natural beauty, much like her own farm, is quickly slipping away. See "Last Year on the Farm" paintings at www.v-vaughan.com and visit Vaughan's daily painting blog vvaughan.blogspot.com. -JDS Jeffery Sparks is an artist and writer living in Northwest Arkansas.
We all have a farm in our memory. Maybe your grandparents or another family member had a place in the country where agricultural work was done and folks gathered. For 32 years I had a place on a little farm near Austin, Texas, in the small town of Manor. My husband was raised there and our children were the 4th generation . Our place was a dairy farm at first. Gault Dairy Farm was known all over this part of Texas, supplying milk to Superior Dairies in Austin. It took their lifetime, but David and Ila Mae Gault, my husband’s grandparents nurtured a small herd and a few acres into a robust herd of 1600 cows. For over 35 years Pa milked all these cows every 12 hours, every day, with NO VACATIONS! That’s farm life. The younger generations also put in their time. While a teenager, my husband drove tractors, mended fences and picked up the heavy square hay bales from the fields. The work was hard enough that full-time farming was not his goal in life. This, I think, is a national trend, and our little farms are disappearing. A few years after I joined the family, Pa got out of the dairy business, but kept busy with tending a few dozen cows and this beautiful land till he died. His daughter, my husband’s Aunt Nancy kept the farm going until the sprawl of Austin surrounded us. Selling the land was the best thing for the family to do. So at the end of 2007, we all left the farm.
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