BARNS

On a morning walk with Hudson last year, a local, weathered barn caught my eye — its sun-bleached siding, rusted metal roof, and the way the evening light played off its surface made it impossible to ignore. It wasn’t just a structure; it was a layered artifact of use, memory, and age. I snapped a photo and couldn’t stop thinking about it.

I looked forward to passing by each day, finding new details on each visit. This barn became the focus for a creative exploration, a process of observing, abstracting, and interpreting through drawing and watercolor.

I began by loosening up with small observational studies. Quick, gestural sketches helped me understand the barn’s proportions, rooflines, and surface textures. Some drawings were accurate; others intentionally veered toward abstraction. I let go of any actual barn and focused instead on rhythm, structure, and feeling. Through repetition, I discovered how the barn could be broken down into essential lines and silhouettes.

This sketching phase wasn’t just preparation for painting; it was a way of thinking through the building, learning its language of form and material.

With that visual vocabulary in place, I shifted to watercolor. I wasn’t interested in rendering the barn as-is. Instead, I used washes of color to evoke what the barn felt like: its warmth, weathered history, its simple, harmonic order, and rural calmness. The palette shifted from literal to expressive: rusty reds, faded grays, golden ochres, and soft sky blues.

Each piece became less about replication and more about essence. Through color and composition, I let the barn transform into something emotional and personal.

This barn sparked a whole series — a meditation on rural vernacular architecture, memory, and place. What began as a single structure turned into a visual language I now return to again and again.