A Work in Progress
Stand on a country road in the middle of this valley and experience an expanse of space to all sides. Fields stretch out before you in every way to a distant horizon. It is an eerily quiet place except for the distant grinding of tractors and trucks and the haunting sound of an unseen locomotive.
Dotting the landscape like little islands are old farmhouses. Many of these are no longer occupied but used as storage buildings surrounded by parked tractors, plows, and diskers. These old houses make it easy to picture earlier generations making their lives farming here. It is quiet, too. On a Sunday, one can park and paint on a side road, and in the course of two houses, only two or three cars will pass.
"Old Farmhouse near Moss Landing", 24"x16" oil on canvas.
This old farmhouse sits on a slight rise as if on a hill above a lake of crops.
Farm on Armstrong Road", 24"x16" oil on canvas.
The road is a dirt mud track used by plows and pickup trucks to reach the far fields. The old barn is in the last stages of collapse.
Out Buildings on a Farm", 24"x16" oil on canvas.
The old out buildings shine bright in the noon sun. You can see that all of the windows have been boarded up.
"Armstrong Road at Blanco Road", 20"x16" oil on canvas.
Somehow this scene of a simple intersection is almost emblematic of the rough roads of Salinas Valley farmlands.
"The House where Francisco Lives", 24"x16" oil on canvas.
A neat little worker's cottage across the road from where Francisco works, a farm equipment yard.
"Disking near 183 and McFadden Road", 24"x16" oil on canvas.
The field has already been plowed and now the worker is disking the clods in prep for planting.
"Morning Fog with Egret", 24"x16" oil on canvas.
There are often thick morning fogs in the valley. By noon this will be a sunny scene. The egret hunts in the water of a small slough.
"Old RR X-ing at Nashua and Monte Roads", 24"x16" oil on canvas.
The section of tracks that cross the road have been removed but the train signal still stands. A mile to the right, an railroad trestle still spans the Salinas River.
"House on Davis near Hitchcock", 24"x16" oil on canvas.
The sun blasts the sides of an old farmhouse.
"Rancho Toro", 24"x16" oil on canvas.
Rancho Toro is the home to many migrant farmhands.
"House on Hitchcock Road", 24"x16" oil on canvas.
Toro looms in the background on a sunny day on the old farm.
"Salinas River Valley", 24"x16" oil on canvas.
The Salinas River is glimpsed through the trees in the foreground just past the plowed field.
