acrylic on canvas: "Fully Involved"

"Fully Involved was an interesting challenge. Depicting fire, water and at night. Now in private collection of a retired fire chief.

 

acrylic on canvas: "Goose and Maverick"

"Goose and Maverick was done during a visit to friends in Maine. I'd hoped to begin working on an impressive vista horizon elsewhere on their land but it was raining and foggy most of the day. Determined to paint something, we went for a walk, coming across two of their sheep, Goose and Maverick (yup. named after characters in Top Gun) under a shed. Took a couple of photos, came back in the house and began painting. Got this completed in about two hours, while visiting and chatting.

Street Scenes: Gelston House in East Haddam Village

 

Domestic Scenes: House portrait; pond painting

  A client asked for a house portrait. Customarily, when doing a house portrait I interview the residents of the house to determine their interests and what unique things they would like in the completed image. In this instance they told me the location from which the house was to be painted.

Yet during an interview and a site visit it was evident that a key feature of the property, a koi pond, lovingly built over time by one of the couple, would not be clearly visible from the preferred vantage point. Additionally, on the site visit I could see that much of the family's outdoor entertaining and visiting was conducted from a deck overlook above the pond.  It seemed certain that providing a portrait without the pond was as if one did a portrait of a couple with only one person in the picture.

So I elected to include, as part of the original agreed upon commission price, the pond. 

 The house was painted in acrylic 22"x28". For many reasons, this one was more of a challenge, from how to make the base of the pond look like more than a pile of rocks to angles and quirky add-ons and how to make them appear as a cohesive image. The personalization make the complete picture easier.  

The koi pond is a watercolor. 12" x 16". This was, for me, a pleasure to paint. During the sketching phase, I observed a Chinese character for "Spring" on a stone plate. In interests of completeness, the other three seasons were added based, clock-wise, with the original siting of Spring. 

Commissions are often a challenge. Sometimes the query isn't clear. But I learn from each of them.

"History Lesson"

Identifying a handful of locations where Black people were massacred in the name of white supremacy. At least three sites were thriving Black communities that were destroyed; two (Tusla OK, and Ocoee FL) were by Ku Klux Klan members - one a direct assault intended to prevent black citizens from voting in 1920. The other (Seneca Village)m was destroyed by bureacuratic intervention/

Acrylic on wood panel in shadow box. 12"x20"/30.5x50 cm (c) 2021 Will Brady

Hunting Cabin - Whigville CT

Two versions of the same site, one a watercolor on paper; the other acrylic on canvas. I tend to paint "dry"

First Church, East Haddam CT - looking from Venture and Meg Smith's Gravesites

Venture Smith was a prominent member of the East Haddam and Haddam communities in the early 19th Century. Venture Smith was an African-American farmer and craftsman. Yet, except for his own accounts,  there seems little to document his contributions to Haddam Neck and East Haddam. This painting of First Church, Congregational, is thus symbolic perhaps. His family burial area at the cemetery adjacent to the Church is prominent and overlooks to the sanctuary. 

In his early sixties, he was unjustly charged with the loss of a white man's property and charged for ten pounds while visiting New London. Although being absent from the scene with witnesses, he was still prosecuted. Smith then carried this matter to other courts, claiming his innocence, but the judgment was never reversed. This misleading judgment was made out of discrimination against Black people. Remembering this experience, he said: "Captain Hart was a white gentleman, and I a poor African, therefore it was all right, and good enough for the black dog.^[9] "

It would not be surprising, then, that even though he achieved financial success before he died, that - as an African man - the powers-that-be kept a certain social isolation between the white settlers and Smith.   Just like the stone wall keeps the Smith family gravesites apart from the European area settlers.

Kidnapped when he was six and a half years old in West Africa and taken to Anomabo on the Gold Coast to be sold into slavery. As an adult, he purchased his freedom and that of his family.

Smith experienced multiple personal setbacks. He bought an enslaved Black man for 400 dollars. However, he wanted to return to his old enslaver, so Smith released him. Venture Smith purchased another enslaved Black man for 25 pounds. After his daughter, Hannah was married, she came down with an illness. However, her husband did not pay adequate attention to her health. Although Smith nursed her, she died.  

In 1775, Smith bought a farm at Haddam Neck, on the Salmon River, in Connecticut. By 1778 he had expanded the initial 10 acres to form a farm of at least 130 acres. Additionally, he made a living by fishing, whaling, farming his land, and trading in the Long Island basin.

He lived the remainder of his life at Haddam Neck.^[1] 

(Birth name: Broteer Furro) (c. 1729 – 1805)

Venture Smith (Wikipedia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venture_Smith
 

Acrylic painting ~ "Fully Involved"

 "Fully Involved"

acrylic on canvas in frame.

Doing this was particularly intriguing - taking on a triple challenge of depicting water, fire and a night scene in the same piece.

(c) 2021 / Will Brady - in private collection

Painting: Sanctuary

 Acrylic on canvas

Painting: Avian Magic

Avian Magic

8" x 24" / 20 x 60 cm

acrylic on canvas

will.brady @ gmail.com

P O Box 346, East Haddam, CT 06423