Farm Life

I decided to paint a picture from my childhood memories. I spent most of my life hanging out in the woods or riding horses. I wasn't allowed to watch TV and if the weather was nice I wasn't allowed in the house until dinner time. I would pack a lunch and take off for the day.

I think if I remember right I was around 8 years old when Mom would let me go anywhere I wanted and stay out all day. Every kid in my neighborhood grew up that way. We would have thought it strange if kids stayed in the house all day and the parents were afraid to let them out to play. Today I never see kids outside playing here in the suburbs of Tulsa. Times have changed and everyone seems to be a ghost haunting their homes a few hours a day and if they are home you never see them outside.

I grew up on a farm 35 miles SE of Portland in a small town of 1,500 people. More people lived outside of town on small farms that grew Christmas trees and berries commercially. The majority of the rural homes were 5 to 40 acres and didn't grow anything commercially. The livestock or produce we grew were for our own use. Were I lived everyone with kids had horses. My mom loved to show our Morgan horses in halter and English dressage. When I went riding I had to ride English Saddle and a double bit English bridle, while my friends all rode Western Saddles with a bar bit.

To avoid being called a sissy I started riding bareback and used baling twin fashioned in a slip knot for my bridle. When I look back I am surprised I am still alive. We rode through the wilderness areas and back roads along Douglas Ridge which had a trail that went all the way to Mt Hood.

The mountains surrounding our farm may have been wild but our little farms were well cared for, we usually had apple trees, pear trees, and walnut and filbert trees in our back yard along with several fenced gardens to keep the deer out.

The color is a little off, I used a cobalt blue for the sky and my iPad camera couldn't pick up the true colors with my light. I really have a hard time catching the color and detail of my paintings to post on steemit. I had to edit this photo because it was so dark and the filters change the color of my sky a little bit.

The yellow background won't be yellow for long. I will apply several different colors of blue to catch the green colors of the surround trees and grass.

There will be bright red apples in the tree which will move the eye from the tree to the little girls sweater to the red barn in the back ground. The horse will be a reddish brown with black legs called a Blood Bay. The horse I used, I posted a picture below is an Arab. The Morgan horses I was raised with looked like Arabs but the Morgan horse head isn't as refined and their chest is bigger. Morgans can pull a plow, run a 1/4 mile race and beat a Quarter Horse or run a fast mile and leave just about anyone in the dust. They also are great trail riders and gentle around kids.