Fall colors at Blackberry, MN - Oil on 11 x 14 Canvas Panel - I got motivated to paint something
colorful and fall like recently and decided to post it on the first
official day of fall.
For those of you who are not familiar with
Blackberry, MN, and I'm sure there are many, it's just seven miles east
of Grand Rapids, MN on US highway 2 (now you know). It was founded more
than 110 years ago by mostly immigrants. My grandfather was one of the
town founders. In addition to having the farm at Blackberry he also
owned and operated a bar in Bovey, MN where I've heard he kept the local
mine workers well oiled for years. I suspect he was also a bootlegger
too as his son, my uncle Vic in later years was the local bootlegger. He
made wine and had a still, distilled his own booze and sold it to the
locals.
Blackberry was a great place for me to grow up because
as a child I was never without something interesting to do. Even in the
long cold winters there were all kinds of sports, hunting, fishing,
trapping, skiing, drawing, lots of local friends and scouting along with
school activities. We were always busy with something although it was a
relaxed lifestyle. Years later when life for me was very fast paced,
officing on 5th Avenue in New York and constantly traveling to make a
living, on many occasions my mind would wander back of the peace and
serenity of life in rural northern Minnesota. Well, Enough history...
The
idea for this painting came from a picture snapped on the property
owned by my cousin Mike Andrews or his wife Pat and then posted to their
web site
( http://www.mississippilodge.blogspot.com/ ).
They have a beautiful log home of about 4500SF overlooking Mississippi
Lake with shoreline on both Mississippi Lake and the Mississippi River.
If you are interested in looking at the picture go to their web site
then scroll down until you come to "fall colors", it’s the first
picture. If you compare the painting with the picture you can see that I
cropped it slightly and made a couple of other small changes to suit
me. I hope Mike and Pat don't mind my using part of their image. The
river in the painting is of course the Mississippi. My childhood home is
about a half mile from where this picture was taken and just slightly
up river. Your comments are welcome.