When I lived in Georgia, I became more involved with Art Festivals around the area in the mid-1980s. While driving down a road outside Cartersville, on Sugar Valley Road, I saw a gas pump that was on a farm, apparently used for the owner’s equipment. These paintings were all variations of the same pump.
This painting was the first in a series of gas pumps I painted during that time. A few other pumps were Shell, Gulf,Mobile, Marathon and Sinclair.
In 1986, during one of my Art Festivals, I had exhibited some of my past work in a photograph book, which included some commission work that I had done. Billy Neal, a local resident, owned a gas station in Cartersville, GA. His wife saw a painting of a Texaco gas pump hanging in my booth and purchased it for her husband as a gift.
Since she had seen some of my local paintings that I had done for other people in my book, asked if I would paint a picture of Billy’s Texaco station in Cartersville, GA., I was delighted to be able to add another local painting to my photograph book, which led to other commissioned paintings.
While we had finished our southern and east coast art tour, we thought we would take a break and take a short vacation. Since we hadn’t seen the states in the New England area, we decided to take a trip to Maine. Along the way, we took a lot of pictures, which I have painted a few of them. I struck gold in Bar Harbor, Maine when I saw J H Butterfield and the Christmas Spirit Shop on the main street of the small village. The Christmas Spirit Shop painting was on the cover of Sunshine Artist magazine for the December issue in 1999. The J H Butterfield store became one of my favorite paintings. You don’t see stores like this anymore. I was fascinated by the history of the store, as it changed to making wreaths in the off season, shipping them all over the country and then catering to the locals and tourism during the peak season.
While at Prater’s Mill Festival in Dalton, Georgia, it was raining quite hard, so I left the painting in the trailer, but I had some prints at my display. A lady from Chattanooga, TN stopped at the booth and fell in love with the print, but asked if I had the original painting. A long story short, I made a trip to the trailer and she purchased the painting.
Hot air balloons were all from an Art Festival I exhibited at in Wytheville, Virginia. I won the Grand Champion award for my painting of J H Butterfield’s store located in Bar Harbor, Maine. Here are links to the other hot air balloons…
