Town Square

Most of our lives are lived in the company of friends and neighbors. There is a pleasure to cities and to rural retreats, but no habitation seems quite so comfortable to me as the Town Square. I grew up in a classic American small town in the foothills of Northern California, and this experience nourished me as a young artist. The rhythms of small town life are as much a part of my being the vigor of my breathing, the coursing of blood in my veins. I feel completely at home in the heart of a small town. Just as evening falls, when people who’ve left work hustle about to do their shopping and complete their errands, so they can get home for dinner.

As a mature artist who’s traveled the world, I’ve come to wonder whether any other county has such as distinctive small town culture as we enjoy here in the USA. I have not found the same comfortable companionship anywhere else, the colorful hustle-bustle of Friday evening in the town square, the spiritual uplift of Sunday morning crowds flocking to church – the nostalgic feeling of home.

I’ve celebrated the distinctive comforts of small town life ever since I began to put paint to canvas. Town Square, one of my happiest early efforts, has just been released in my ongoing Archive Collection. I’m delighted by its exuberant energy. It’s winter in Town Square, the season when we have most need of kindness and companionship; the season when fond memory provides the sweetest comfort. Town Square is, regrettably, not a depiction of my boyhood home. It is instead an artistic flight of fantasy. But oh, how I would have enjoyed having that chestnut vendor in my hometown on a crisp winter evening!