Michelle (Basic) Hendry - Fine Artist & Author

Artist and Author - Landscapes and Ruins

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Room with a View – New Painting

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Room with a View
Room with a View, acrylic, 24x36" © 2011 Michelle Basic Hendry

Well, I squeaked in on the deadline… You can see a larger version here.

This house has become a powerful muse. This place has an aura that I can barely explain. Over the last 18 months, as I uncovered the story behind this abandoned and derelict Muskoka house, the presence of the people have faded and the house itself seems to speak with increasing strength.

When I first went out there in the Spring of 2009, it gave me a single painting. When I returned for another it seemed to tell me I could only have more of these ‘gifts’ if I told its story – and only then.

For “Yellow Door”, it whispered with insistence and light. With “Window Seat”, it gave me a room that I could sit in for hours and watch the sun move across the floor. It challenged me to do the architectural “Waiting” and to think about the people who lived in its rooms and looked out its windows. In “Room with a View” it has revealed its own secret nature and my place in its world – to really see it.

This arrangement between us seemed to allow me to not only discover, layer, by layer, its incredibly rich past, but also its current nature and the tremendous beauty in it.

This house sees many visitors, some destructive, many just curious and they would say. “There is nothing here”. The place has been stripped clean of doors, woodwork and hardware; the windows, shattered, the walls are weathered and the greenery, overgrown. To me, it a house of secrets that only I can see.

Last October, I took an excerpt from my book, laminated it and posted it inside the house, so that future visitors might know its pedigree and perhaps see a little of the magic that they might, otherwise, overlook.

 

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Comments

  2. Oh just one more thing. I have started painting with egg tempera. The luminescent quality of light it gives is amazing. I would love to see this painting in egg tempera! Catherine

  3. Thanks Catherine!
    I would love to learn egg tempera. You might have inspired me to have a closer look. Hmmmm… project for the summer! 🙂

  5. i think it is so great that you have left an excerpt from your book in the house 😀 leaving something like that, that explains the house is a lot better than someone leaving graffiti behind.

    it is a lovely painting 🙂 i love how with your paintings of these abandoned buildings, they all have such distinct personality’s, almost like they are alive and still full of life 🙂

    I really wish i had of been able to have a look into one of the buildings here before it was torn down. we did get to see what some of the inside looked like when they tore off the walls, but its not the same as walking the floors and looking around at everything.

  6. Thanks Tom!

    Thanks Jennifer Rose – They do have personalities, don’t they! 🙂
    There are many buildings I wish I got to meet before they were either torn down, or so far gone that they were not safe to visit… Apparently I have been told that it has been only the last few years that this particular house has really suffered. From what I hear – I wish I had seen it 5 years ago….

  8. Beautiful painting. I should come up with better words, imposing, presence, powerful.
    I love what you’ve done in leaving the page from your book too.

  9. Thanks, Frank and Ingrid!
    I wonder how many people have found it? Probably more as the weather gets better….

  10. I think the tile that’s askew near the doorway really MAKES this painting. I don’t know what it is, but it really grabs me. Great job, hon!

  11. Thanks, Lana. I never really consciously thought about the tile… It just felt right! A break in the geometry…