Heaths Country Store inc Dee's Patchwork Barn and The Wool Shop

The Overland Journey
Acrylic on Canvas 4ft by 2ft, 2004
Back in 2000 I had an exhibition of 50 portraits and 50 landscapes all celebrating the history of the 20th Century. I had just about exhausted myself style wise as any one who knows me knows that my style changes to accomodate the subject at hand. I felt I had done every style possible.
Well after about a year I started to do American folk art with a slight Warren Kimble influence. Just very simple evocative designs. Not too taxing to do but slowly from this I really got into American history and the pioneering spirit. This was the first painting that came out of this kindled interest.

Not much is known about the people in this image. It has been speculated upon whether they were Mormons or husband, wife and his sister who moved out after her husband was killed during the Civil War. I didn't want to add to the speculation beyond enhancing the wander as to who these people are in the middle of nowhere.

The painting for me was very much about the purpose behind why people went out and did the Oregan Trail.
At first glance the picture seems very traditional or easy to look at. We start looking from the left and we see a very warm image, prairie flowers, homespuns, barefoot children, its painted very conventionally and has a sepia like nostalgia. But of course the flowers are turning to seed, the clothes are in tatters, the children are barefoot because they are in dire straits. The wagon is rickety. There is no chance for survival. They have to go beyond the security offered by a cultures established convention if they are to live.

As we progress further to the right we see that as we go the more conventional and traditional painting style changes within the picture, the stylistic transitions are representing a similar change in the peoples psyche as they moved further away from the east coast of America where the governing influences of their culture was concentrated.
As this movement takes place the painting begins to break up a little, some coherency is lost. The boy representing the U.S in his red white and blue is literally in the midst of fragmenting. The U.S was by no means at this stage created, it could quite easilly have broken apart before it ever got the chance to form.

The only person not looking at us is the man, he seems rather distant and split inside by his anxieties. Did the decision to undertake this journey mark doom for everyone. Should he press on and follow the tracks in front as others behind him are following. Should this spot be home, perhaps Eden is just beyond the hills. At this point in the painting the style becomes garish, energetic, its trying to form something, the grasses he is sitting on are not parched but full of growing vigor. He has ambitions, good prospects he believes, but is he being real. The future is uncertain, it is not what was. But such riches and success could be achieved by his very hands, his family could have nice clothes, bread in their hands, a strong and secure home to call their own.

There are a few symbolic emblems within the picture concerning the emergence of the States through the very act of the overland journey that people like these undertook. The sheaves of corn in the toddlers hands and the lone star painting on the right hand wagon, just above the woman's head are very much apart of Virgo - the constellation of the USA. The lone star is Spica, the brightest star of Virgo and is the spike of corn the virgin holds, prosperity by ones own self effort. Incidentally it is also the symbol of artists!

Martha Morrison Minto
Many paintings of the pioneers that emerged after The Overland Journey came from a great book called 'Women's diaries of the Westward Journey' by Lillian Schlissel.
A strange incident the other day was we had a local medium come in, Trish. She went into the room where this painting hangs and she said she was picking up things. There was a Mary with a Martha and something about being trapped in and surrounded by water. We said it got nothing to do with anyone we knew. Then she pointed at the painting above and asked who that was. I said I didn't have a clue, it was painted so many paintings ago that I couldn't remember but all details are on the back. I took it down convinced that her name wasn't Martha.
Not only that but she had a daughter called Mary and when Martha was undertaking the Oregon Trail as a child she and her family became terribly trapped in a vast swamp.

The Water Carrier
taken from a b/w photo of a young girl who would have been responsible for fetching water for the mules and for the gold miners in the gold fields. She was possibly dressed in her Sunday best for the photograph.

The Daughter of Joseph
Unlike other pictures I do many of the pioneer portraits have no symbolic representation. There is no story told in them just my reaction to the photo in front of me.

Emily Butler
What I was interested in was how I painted these photos in comparison to the photos of the native Americans which can be seen on other pages.

Mary Jane Megquier
What transpired was that by and large the pioneer photos are poorly taken, faded, blured, worn with age. There is a carelessness to them as they are the conquering culture. They, unlike the images of native Americans, do not need to be preserved. As such most of the images of the pioneers have a somewhat ghostly and fleeting look to them.

Olive Oatman

The Gould Boy