I've heard of something - related to writing, painting, and perhaps to music, called "Spirit of Place." Since here in my Nova Scotia studio I seem content to treat the same general subject or scene over and over in my paintings, I must be in thrall to the spirit of this place. Whether in my studio looking out of the south window (towards our house) or out the east window over weeds, grass, and trees, I don't tire of the views. A similar thing occurs when sketching or painting in our Gazebo, a screened structure overlooking the tidal channel and marsh below Five Houses. Although it would seem possible to grow weary of working and reworking the same scene, I do not seem to.

    One paints from what the eye sees (translated through that wonderful optic nerve and through the painter's brain and filtered through life's experience). I feel this is a wonderful spot to locate. No soaring mountains, colorful buttes, vast vistas I knew in my youth in Kansas, Nebraska, and Northern Idaho, this is a place for a painter to distill beauty from the surroundings of sea, hills, fields, and trees.

    As well as an occasional return to painting "still life," there have been other nearby excursions - to Riverport, to Kingsburg, to "Himmelman's Hill" (now Fulcher's Hill). And in 2006, to the "flat" or marsh between Lunenburg and Blue Rocks.

     However, most of the paintings of the more than twenty years we've spent Summers and Fall here concern the small community outside Riverport called Five Houses - a place we (and the rest of our family) truly love. And an area we venerate.