Marshall Hall on a Warm Winter Day

Marshall Hall, oils on canvas board, 11" x 14"

The day after Christmas (Boxing Day) I headed down to visit my friends in Southern Maryland. We'd planned to do an art share: a show and tell about what we have learned and done in our art classes this year, and I hoped to get in a little painting too.

Sadly, Marguerite was too sick to join us, but we three had fun in the studio sharing our art. Looking at it all together I was surprised to see how much it added up to. It was wonderful to see how each of us had grown in our chosen areas of interest this past year: Patrise in her studies of the face and figure for her illustrations, Linda in her narrative painting and myself in plein air with oils. In the evening we joined other friends in their circle for a dinner of delicious Christmas leftovers.

Getting up the next morning, it was cloudy--would it rain, drizzle or clear? Patrise had suggested we paint at Marshall Hall, at the southern end of Piscataway Park, where there is an old ruined manor house dating from the 1720's. The idea of painting ruins has always appealed to me--I think of the romantic painters' fabulous drawings and paintings of ruins--Linda wasn't so keen on that, so she decided to go to the familiar north end of the park while we packed our gear and Patrise's two dogs and headed out to Marshall Hall.

I remember that in the 60s' when we lived in Arlington, there was an old amusement park there that I think we visited once, but I have no specific recollection of it. The sun began to burn through the clouds on our drive down, and by the time we'd walked around a bit with the dogs and found where we wanted to set up, it was sunny and so warm that I had to shed my parka (on the way back I saw the thermometer in my car registered 63 degrees Fahrenheit).

The ruined house was a challenge to paint--I selected this view because I thought the shadows would help us articulate the architecture better, but the ugly chain link fence needed to be edited out. Patrise invented a broken-down picket fence for her painting which I thought added a great fantasy element to her piece, while mine is far more austere, maybe Hopperesque. There is a stark and austere beauty about this season, and the ruined house in light of the wintry sun seemed to complement it perfectly.