30 x 36

Oil on Canvas

This piece is a still life painted from a huge group of cotton bolls I bought when visiting Louisiana. I used to be fascinated by the way you could drive to my grandmother's house in rural Louisiana (Winnsboro, LA)  and certain times of year just pull the car over and literally pick cotton off the actual plant in the field. I only ever saw the cotton after most of it had gone to the gin (maybe because we went at holidays?) so it would be the scraps of bolls left that we would gather that still had the seeds embedded. Raw cotton is what is it called. It would be a fun time to try to separate seeds from the cotton on the rest of the drive but cotton seeds are very sticky and hard to remove (which is why Cyrus McCormick was very important - Google it!). And get this-We used to go on school field trips to the gin and play in the trailers of cotton (which sounds odd even to me, now, but how much fun!) and you would itch like crazy afterwards but well worth it. All this is to say I have a little fascination with cotton. I have it on the tables, in vases, at Nimrod and I am pretty sure most people think that is weird, but to me, cotton is a really good memory. Plus as Frankie and I say- Cotton doesn't die and need to be thrown out and replaced! TMI about cotton. I know. Thanks for reading all that.