It was a Wednesday morning. I remember it because May and my Mom went to the local library for Book Bugs. For some reason I couldn’t drive my car so my Mom dropped me off that this park down the street from the library. I never knew the park existed because it was so well hidden from the road.

I love how a place unfolds its secrets over time. As I slowly explore Roanoke I’m finding so many beautiful pockets- like this park!

So I set up under the pavilion with my easel on a picnic table (the leg on my french easel had snapped the day before so I used the picnic table as a support.) A few families were enjoying the playground nearby and the weather was strange. It was sunny and also sort of misty. It was hot and humid but still fresh- it seemed all the leaves on the trees had been born and were growing from yellow green to a bold green color.

I looked around to see what might turn into a painting. In the distance I saw a couple of warehouses and some equipment. One of the buildings was a lovely dark turquoise and the another a dark red brick color. They faced each other and beyond the two buildings was a white warehouse. The arrangement in space looked very abstract me- a block of blue, white and red sat in space in a row surrounded by green and enveloped in sunny misty air.

I kept thinking about what artist Ken Kewley says- paint what you love because the love comes through. So I selected the shapes in space that spoke to me one at a time and built a fiction. The picture is very small and almost square - less than 5 inches on one side. When I look at the picture I’m reminded of home and hidden spaces in the visual world and hidden spaces in the mind.