Beth Thomson’s Paintings - #2

Continuing with my homage to my mother’s paintings as well as her many multi-media arts and crafts creations, this posting is all about her watercolors, something that she seemed to really focus on in her latter years…

To begin, these first 3 paintings were among her earliest watercolors...probably from the late 1940s or early 1950s.  

I have no idea when she created these 2 very impressionistic watercolors...both featuring flowers and/or other vegetation.  

As with her oil paintings, Beth loved to paint flowers. These style of impressionistic watercolors are among her grandson David's favorites... 

You are right!  This is not a painting... Mom loved photography too and I have hundreds of her old photos.  They frequently provided a basis for future paintings...

This is a perfect example of the symbiotic relationship between her photos and her art...

This whimsical painting includes some colorful little mushrooms or toadstools...

...and then there are the paintings that are beyond my limited artistic imagination!  

This series of watercolors are all about the forests, foliage and greenery.  Our son and his family in Omaha have many of his grandmother's paintings on display throughout their home.  

These little paintings featuring people, including a mother and her daughters, are a departure for her usual watercolor subjects, but Laurie and I love them.  Laurie especially relates to the hair styles in the first one as she worked for many years as a hairdresser...

...yet another photo leading to a painting.

Mom's impression of pebbles in a stream...

 These paintings continue with her usual theme or subject...nature interpreted in art.  

Sorry for the glare in so many of these paintings. The glass protects them but it also makes them harder to photograph.  

This certainly isn't a great photo but it is one of the more meaningful paintings from my perspective.  Mom painted this for me because it was one of my favorite views near her home in the countryside near Concord Michigan.  This valley is in the upper reaches of the Grand River...

I do believe that I see caterpillars in this second painting...a whimsical touch.

Love the fall leafs and with the rocks...

These last 3 paintings were among the last ones that she did.  The style is much different, because as was her tendency, her desire to try something different, albeit a painting style or different artistic medium meant that she was always in a learning mode.

There will be two more posts about my mom's art work.  The next one will focus on multi-media efforts including weaving, pottery and 'crafty' creations.

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them...

Thanks for stopping by for a 'gallery tour'!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave

Dinner in Tellico Plains Tennessee…Plus

It was the Labor Day Holiday weekend and I told Laurie that we were going to go out for dinner.  When I discovered that my restaurant of choice was closed for the long weekend, I had to refocus and find another dining destination that wasn’t too far from home… 

We’d heard from a couple of friends that the food at Tellicafe in Tellico Plains Tennessee was both good and reasonable.  This restaurant is about 30 minutes from our home but, given the recommendations and the fact that we’d driven by it so many times before, I decided that this was the time to finally give it a try!

Tellicafe’s lobby/waiting area is large and pleasant.  However, since we were very early for dinner, there weren’t many customers around.

There are 2 separate dining rooms at Tellicafe, each one off one end of the lobby.   Décor is simple but pleasant and the dining area was very clean.  Laurie was patiently waiting for me at our table… FYI, I’m not a fan of booths and find chairs much more comfortable, at least from my perspective. 

We started out with an order of Fried Green Tomatoes, a southern staple food item. ($6.25) I felt that they were about average…just not great.  The dipping sauce definitely improved them.

Other appetizers on the menu include such items as Trout Cakes, Loaded Potato Skins, Onion Tobacco Straws, Fried Pickles, (This is what Laurie really wanted instead of the Fried Green Tomatoes!), and a quesadilla.  They also have a Green Tomato and Country Ham Soup on the menu.

For her dinner, Laurie ordered the Catfish Dinner. ($9.99) She really liked the catfish…and for that matter, her entire meal.  She especially enjoyed those little hush puppies and, to my surprise also gave a thumbs up for her green beans!  I tasted a piece of catfish and a hush puppy and I concurred that they were better than average…

The menu was fairly broad and varied.  Other dinner items include Stuffed River Trout, Coconut Chicken, Steaks, Roast Turkey and Dressing, Beef Tips, Cherahala Chicken Cordon Bleu with Benton’s Bacon, 4 pasta dishes, 4 vegetarian offerings plus sandwiches and hamburgers.

You’re right…this isn’t exactly health food!  This is Tellicafe’s Country Fried Chicken Dinner. ($9.99) I’m not sure that I’ve ever had boneless chicken breasts before but they weren’t “tenders” per se, and they were shaped like complete chicken breasts.

The fried chicken was very nice indeed and the white pepper gravy was a great added touch.  The French fries were OK but I thought that the meat enhanced turnip greens were a very nice variation on the norm.  Another plus was that they had Tabasco on hand! 

The food and bang for your buck at Tellicafe was definitely a cut above average.  Our waitress was efficient, friendly and helpful.  We will return to try other items on the menu.  Tellicafe is located at 128 Bank Street in Tellico Plains Tennessee.  Phone: 423-253-2880.  Their website is at http://tellicafe.com/.   

As we drove around Tellico Plains after dinner, I spotted this old International Harvester/Oren Fire Apparatus Company fire truck…a pumper…for sale and parked behind a local building.  It had served with the Avoca Volunteer Fire Department near Bluff City Tennessee.

This fire truck is probably at least 35 years old.  Oren was founded in Virginia in 1917 and the company was purchased by Grumman in 1976.  They phased out the Oren name by the early to mid-1980s. 

Moving on down country roads as we made our way back home, we came across these 2 young cows by the fence.  Since Laurie has a soft spot for most animals…and especially horses, dogs, cats, mules and cows, we had to stop so she could talk to them and take their picture.

That’s about it for now.  Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave

Paintings by Beth Thomson – My Mom (#1)

I’ve shared a few of my mother’s painting and craft items via my blogsite over the last few years but now I’ve decided to publish a series of posts that summarize her body of work. 

Note: I don't know why the following segment has a white background but I couldn't figure out how to fix it! 

To begin, this posting focuses on a series of my mom’s primitive paintings that fall into the American “Folk Art Genre”, a style which was popularized by Anna Mary Robertson Moses, (aka “Grandma Moses”) in the mid-1900s.  Another well-known folk artist, Alice Latimer Moseley, continued with this style into the late part of the 20^th century. 

As an aside, I think that it’s a strange coincidence that both of these well-known artists had last names that were so similar… (Moses and Moseley)   

  

Whereas Grandma Moses tended to paint large scenes encompassing a variety of elements, such as an entire farm, my mother painted small, more intimate vignettes.  Here Mom and daughter are shelling peas.

To see a variety of Grandma Moses’ paintings, go to https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=grandma+moses&id=B057A558F2AE665BC46D330B98C2A5208B425999&FORM=IARRTH. 

My mother’s folk art/primitive paintings also exclusively focused on family, hearth and home…  In this miniature oil painting, mother and daughter are harvesting strawberries…accompanied by the baby in the carriage and a cat doing what cats do best.

I personally remember stringing cranberries and popcorn as a garland for the Christmas tree…do you?  As you can see from the photo under the painting, Laurie and I did this once many years ago when ‘little David’ was about 9 years old.  I’d tell you how old he is now…but he doesn’t like to publicize his age at this point in his life!

Processing walnuts in the fall… What a miserable task!  I have participated in this ‘event’.  The husks stain everything they touch but of course, the nuts themselves are a treat.  In addition, the husks make a nice dye for wool and fabrics. 

Mom and the children gathering wildflowers and violets in the spring…

Mom seemed to love kitchen scenes like this one with the mother, grandma, the children and the ubiquitous cat.  After all, the kitchen was and still is the heart of the home.

FYI…To view prints of some of the Alice Moseley’s folk art paintings, just go to http://www.alicemoseley.com/the-collection/available-prints/.  I own the print entitled “Labor versus Management”.  It’s a classic! 

  

Many of my mom’s folk art/primitive style paintings were sold or given to family and friends.  This is a photo of a grouping that was given to my brother Smith and his wife Mary many years ago.

Mary had also framed some original greeting cards that my mom had made...creating a mini work of art.

Mom also painted many, many tiles featuring folk art scenes and then fired them in her kiln.  I have this set of 12 which shows a family centric event for each of the 12 months of the year.  Beth’s sister Jeane Austin had these on display in her kitchen dining room in the Buckhead section of Atlanta for many years.

This little family scene from the set of 12 tiles above is a bit unusual in that the entire family, including the father, is featured.  Most of mom’s art work that includes people as part of the composition is focused on women, mothers and children.  Perhaps this was a subconscious reflection on her childhood with a truly dominant mother, the early death of my dad and/or a less than always a happy second marriage.

…another busy vignette with mom hanging out the laundry, the baby acting out in the carriage, the boy flying the kite and of course a cat and dog.  Pets were included in many of her folk art paintings. 

Here’s another close-up of one of the tiles.  In keeping with the famous folk artists of the mid to late 1900's, my mom’s primitive works all hearken back to another era where family was the true focus of everyday life.  This depicts a Michigan cellar, where the bounty of your canning and fruits and vegetables were stored for keeping over the winter months.

These next 3 paintings have migrated to our son and his family’s home in Omaha Nebraska.  Their collection of his grandma’s art works as well as his Uncle Bob’s artistic endeavors continues to increase as the years go by.

As usual…in this example, there is a cat included in this painting of mother and daughter shucking corn on the porch with the sunflowers behind them in full bloom.

This busy painting is set in the spring time…with junior flying a kite, baby on a blanket in the grass, mom with the laundry, the little girl with a basket of her own…and of course, another cat.

This is another example of one of my mom’s paintings with the father figure included in the picture.  He’s obviously just returned home from a successful hunting excursion with a goose for dinner! 

…One final large folk art style oil painting, this time on canvas.  This particular painting was actually hung for a short time in the Detroit Institute of Arts in a special exhibit.  A close examination of the picture reveals a couple of spots where my brother Robert decided to ‘improve’ on the scene by marking it up with a pen… Robert Thomson was an artist in his own right, to the extent that I’ve been unable to purchase a couple of his paintings from a dealer in Kansas City.  He’s holding on to them! 

If you are interested in visiting the largest collection of Grandma Moses’s paintings in Bennington Vermont, learn more about it at https://benningtonmuseum.org/.  Alice Moseley’s works are featured in a museum in Bay St. Louis Mississippi.  Check it out at http://www.alicemoseley.com/. 

  

As you will see in a couple of future posts, my mom…Elizabeth or Beth Weed Myers Thomson…was a very prolific artist and crafter in a variety of mediums.  Next up will be a number of her watercolors.

That’s about it for now.  Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave