Misogyny

Even by the standards of the genre, ‘Pretty Polly’ is a menacing murder ballad. It’s the tone of the young man’s voice. “You guessed about right,’ he replies to Polly’s concerns about his manner, “I dug on your grave the best part of last night.” Her submissive replies only make the song more chilling. They act out parts written long before them. Even though he murders her in an act of control, Willy’s crime seems the only choice left toRead more

Silver Dagger

A faded red barn in Madison County, its sides hung with raccoon skins. The nailed pelts remind me of the sinister French fairy story ‘Bluebeard’- a Breton folk tale that, like many of the ballads, has its source in an actual crime. The young, new wife disobeys Bluebeard’s warning to never enter one locked room in his castle. When curiosity overcomes her, she finds a room scarlet with blood and the hanging corpses of her husband’s past wives. But theRead more
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Mary

I interviewed a number of women at a shelter in Asheville. The idea was to create a series of paintings that would symbolize their experiences, while maintaining their anonymity. One story took me some distance from Asheville. I found the place she had left behind. Her story, like some others, involved evangelical judgement on the part of the abuser. A church nearby had some overturned statues in the graveyard. This was the starting point for the painting, ‘I have ledRead more

A kindred spirit

The four paintings that came together as ‘Young Hunting‘ included an interpretation of an abandoned house I had passed many times on the road between Asheville and Scaly Mountain. In painting there’s some rule about not placing your subject directly in the middle of the canvas, but  doing so sometimes works to advantage. The photographer William Christenberry has recorded the vanishing architecture of Alabama’s Black Belt in just this way- each building carefully centered, emphasizing every symmetry, neatly framed byRead more

Conjured Ghosts

At twilight, a trestle bridge between Whittier and Cherokee- a span of rusted steel, old timbers and stained concrete across the Tuckasegee River. The steep banks are choked with kudzu, dotted with the hulks of old cars. Most of my paintings begin with places that don’t need a visible ghost. The settings feel quite haunted enough. But the ballad series offers a new pleasure- by placing the figure in the landscape I can be a film director of sorts. TheRead more