Hidden Homestead

by Steve Henderson

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Price

$1,100

Dimensions

16.000 x 12.000 inches

Title

Hidden Homestead

Artist

Steve Henderson

Medium

Painting - Oil On Panel

Description

So often, we miss seeing things because we’re too busy to look.

That sound so simple that it’s not worth saying, no? But then again, we live in a society that is very busy indeed, too busy to look around us and observe because we’re not in one place long enough to do so.

So it is with the house in the painting, Hidden Homestead. A copse of Lombardy trees, which are not something that are native to the dry landscapes of the Eastern Washington, USA, region, stand sentinel over an old, disused homestead. Long ago, or not so long ago, depending upon how you view 150 years, a human hand, before setting the foundation for a dwelling, took time to plant these trees, creating a wind break and defining an area that was to be a family home, a place for children to grow up in, for gardens to be nourished, for that house where there would be life and light, laughter and pain.

Today, it’s easy to miss seeing these trees while driving on the highway that, at a distance, passes by and through the landscape. The trees are from another time and another place, a time before all our smart phones and digital assistants and other techno toys that we’re told are unimaginably important.

Because we’re going so quickly, on to wherever it is that we needed to be five minutes ago, it may be easy to miss the house tucked deep within the trees, and when someone asks us about it, we say with confidence, “Oh, there’s no house there anymore.” We didn’t see it, because we were moving too fast.

Maybe it doesn’t matter that we didn’t notice the house, and that’s a good point. But what does matter is that we get into the habit of not noticing a lot of things – not just old homesteads tucked into the trees, but lots of things going on around us: events, happenings, “news,” wars and rumors of wars. We’re so busy moving from one place to another, from one obligation to another, from one podcast to another, that we don’t take time to stop and actually see, to process what we observe.

And so we don’t see the house, or the trees, or much of anything.


Lombardy Homestead, also on this site, is a companion piece -- showing a similar scene – without the house – in high summer -- to Hidden Homestead.

Uploaded

January 24th, 2020

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