Waking Dream
18" x 24"
Acrylic on Panel
Original SOLD
2012
Jennings Farm located in NJ inspired this painting. Jennings Farm is deemed an historical farm and is run by two sisters. One deals with beef and the other in boarding and rescuing horses. I came upon this farm due to a very good friend of mine having boarded her two horses there. I had been riding my friend’s thoroughbred Pete for a little over a year when she moved her horses to Jennings Farm and I immediately fell in love with it. So did Pete and his best bud Dan.
Out in one of the fields reserved for retired/rescued horses there is a dead elm tree. This tree and the view of the barn beyond inspired me a great deal and upon gaining permission I went about trying to capture what I was feeling. I managed to fail spectacularly. I ended up not painting anything but a background colour and instead spent about 5 hours drawing the elm tree. It was a beautiful sunny summer day so it was not much of a hardship! This concept then plagued me, I found myself daydreaming about how I wanted it to look and I came up with zilch. Until one evening as I was dozing off to sleep I had the clearest vision of how it was to be. I felt as if I had been slapped in the forehead with these amazing colours and I realized I now had a roadmap for bringing this piece to light.
The reason I have no shadows in “Waking Dream” is because I wanted to capture a dreamlike quality and yet stay true to what inspired me in the first place; Jennings Farm is such a wonderful place and I wanted to honour it and the great times I had there while hanging out with my friend and her horses Pete and Dan.
This is the original sketch for “Waking Dream”.
